So this thread has sort of exploded and it seems that it only took two days for this to (some degree according to the replies) enter the meta. The Artosis/TeamLiquid tweets really pushed it over the edge. Over the next few weeks people will use it, test it, and the community will evaluate its overall worth by ... trying it in games and either winning or losing. So good luck, I hope this was worth while, and here is the information that I can help give you guys while trying it out.
NOTE - Based on most of the responses I don't think people got many of the reasons this is so good. So I've simplified the shit out of it and focused on what I think the long term less gimmicky use of this is. For those curious about the original numbers that lead me to this post - see spoiler at end.
Why is the OC special?
In the past, there were only three ways to generate income.
SC2 has given us a fourth income generating unit. It is the only one of its kind.
The MULE itself might be the little thingie that carries minerals around, but the thing thats actually special is not the MULE, its the OC itself. The reason? Oversaturation and the fact that the MULEs themselves are renewable for no mineral cost after your initial 550 investment (in other words, the MULEs themselves are disposable).
Every Orbital Command you build should provide you will a income of ~180/m per minute every minute. It does not matter how many workers are harvesting and it does not matter where you build or position that OC. It can still generate this income as long as you have a base, any base, anywhere, within walking distance of a mineral patch. It does not matter if a hellion fried a mule 5 minutes ago, it does not matter if you have 0 minerals and have nothing but a single OC. Every 90s an OC will bank 50 energy you can use to place a mule anywhere on the map. It doesn't even matter if you forgot to get your minerals for a few minutes - the OC will bank 4 income boosts if you forgot about it for a while, or if you just want to give yourself a sudden burst of 540/m per minute over the next 90 seconds.
Do not think of an OC as you would anything else in SC, it is fundimentally different. The OC is itself an income generating structure. Every 90 seconds an OC will generate you a little mechanical income boost (regardless of where it is or how many workers you have). Note: because OCs generate 50 energy at ~85 seconds there is a period of overlap between two mules, although I constantly cite OC income at ~180/min its closer to ~200 - OC income is higher than MULE income.
OCs are really good.
Can 4 OCs alone be better than a saturated expansion?
Yes. 4OCs will generate an income equal to a saturated expansion but there is more to it. Let's compare the options for generating 800/m/minute (worker costs are food adjusted @12.5 - no adjustment was applied for supply value of base).
~800/m/minute
This costs 1900 minerals / 24 supply
~800/m/minute
This costs 1800 minerals / 24 supply
~800/m/minute
This costs 550 minerals / 0 supply
Admittedly, this is a favorable oversimplification depending on your perspective, to get those 4 mules working constantly you need 4 OCs. With a bit of a discount considering you start with one CC, getting 3 addl OCs will cost you 1390 (food adjusted cost @12.5 per food not including first CC in food discount or build cost). That doesn't seem that great, sure you save a 400-500 minerals - but not game breaking.
The difference is in exposure and vulnerability. Look at those three bases and the costs under them. Thats how many minerals you're risking on your expansion. The real cost of an expansion is not the 3-400 minerals to build the base, the real cost is in the 1500 minerals to build the workers and the eight minutes it takes to replace them if they die.
Because an OC/MULE only expansion is nearly risk free compared to other bases and they fly you can take risks with them that you never would have dreamed of with a real expansion. The reality is, if a big threat drops and stims on your door and kills all your mules, it sucks, it hurts, and yeah, it might lose you a game. But often, you can just lift the thing, stick it somewhere else, call more mules and be just fine.
OC Farming is superior to a normal expansion since it carries less Risk. That means you can be more aggressive about 'expanding' to vulnerable areas - including gold expos or corner locations.
How does this fit into Supply Depots?
Every time you build a supply depot, you spend 100 minerals. Once built, those minerals are lost forever. They're just a burden and they die easy. A OC provides you with 137 minerals worth of supply, has a ton of hitpoints and unlike a supply depot will pay for itself in 3:20.
In an ideal world, you should absolutely never build a supply depot.
The reality is that you will have to build at least a couple supply depots in order to live long enough for an OC to pay for itself (I got a little over excited with my first post ;D). That said, every time you build a depot, you should be aware of the fact that those minerals could have been better spent on more OCs. That in the long run those OCs will catapult you ahead of your opponent.
Keep that in mind with every supply depot you make. Each one is a delay in OC Farming, the long term benefit in opting for OCs over Depots (where feasible) is very real.
How effective can OC Farming be?
Because your OC Farm can be very defensively positioned (you can actually use the OCs to wall off), OC Farming allows you the additional income of an expansion without the additional vulnerability. Because OCs can fly - they also give you tremendous flexibility in repositioning your current MULE fest.
There's a tremendous amount of flexibility in how this can be used. I think that it should be strong incentive to take a natural early and I predict terran FE may become really popular. With it, you should be able to produce the income of three or four bases much faster and much safer than any other race. Your MULE income off of the main and FE alone will be half of a third, and that should be a big appeal.
Some people may try to use a 4-8 OC mega push and play mass macro style. Frankly, I think this could be viable mid or late game. Sure you will lose at cost, but you can realistically double your opponents income so just throw 60 marines at him every minute, most will die, but your income will replace losses faster, and because you can reposition your expos at will with low risk you can mine shit out with less concern.
Or you could just play fairly standard and is drop a couple extra OCs if it looks like the game will go past 10 minutes. You should start to dramatically pull ahead in income compared to any other race with considerably less supply used in workers and with dramatically risk.
As this develops, I'll add more edits with notes, builds, replays, etc.
Some Replays and comments about games posted around page 18...
1v1 TvZ a better replay, the zerg(me) could have gotten better tech units rather tahn mutas. probably infestors. shows how fast a terran can produce and waves of waves of attacks. I could've micro'd better as well. http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/112219-1v1-terran-zerg-metalopolis
Please note that we knew what the terran was doing, and try'd things to stop it. We did not have any rules just the Z or P trying to stop it.
On December 04 2010 10:50 Bixs wrote: Here are some replays:
On December 04 2010 20:17 Dsn4001 wrote: Played against someone going mass orbital commands. You'd notice that even though I was always ahead in workers by at least 8. His income is always higher than mine except at the end game.
Problem was the map really, jungle basin is not best map for this since expansion besides the natural are limited.
If you have replays - feel free to PM me and I will include them, win or lose, top diamond or low bronze.
gongryong has put together a little FAQ - his comments mostly revolve around helping to clarify the first version of this post - which was much more extreme and focused on a more committed early OC all in - but I thought his points were still good. If he (or anyone else) wants to update or contribute to this, please feel free to PM.
FAQ
1. Please summarize what is this strategy/build all about? + Show Spoiler +
(Over the duration of this thread, this strategy has evolve a bit thanks to those willing to spend time and energy to try it out and prove/disprove it.) At this point, this build is about going standard early game as you see fit, and after that switching to mass OC for supply and mules and inevst in a mule heavy economy to support your army. With mass mules, you can sacrifice some of your scvs in order to get to an army heavy max 200/200 (some say 180/20) scenario
2. Do you mean i DO NOT have to build depots AT ALL? + Show Spoiler +
The idea of this strategy is to reduce dependence on depots as food supply and instead get it from OCs, especially mid-late game.
3. So you just build the initial depot and spam OC all the way? + Show Spoiler +
That was one of the initial ideas. But early tests indicate that you need standard depot build early game for the following reasons: - at 400m and longer build time, OCs are not optimal early game - you need early game depots to support first batch of scvs and early army
By midgame, or once you have a stable economy and decent army, you can SWITCH to this "build" by forgetting about depots and spamming OCs for mules (see details above for the figures on mule-heavy economy).
You will still need scvs particularly early game (per standard) until it is safe to switch to mule-based economy. At this point, you will need less scvs, mainly for gas harvest, repair, and building. Reducing scvs is an essential part of this strategy since it will give you a bigger percentage of army in a 200/200 max out scenario vs others.
If you proceed with your game rushing to this strategy, you will clearly have to skimp on early army. An opponent who scouts this might react to this aggressively with early pressure or might all-in against you. this could be a major problem. Or, you could simply go standard early to mid game, 2 basing preferably, and switch to this strategy, then you could see the potential of this strategy. Moreover, some point that mules only address the mineral aspect of your economy, what about the gas? I see this a general economy issue and not particular to this strategy - meaning mule or not, terran or any other race, one has to always mind gas harvesting. you will have to save some scvs for gas mining.
At this point, this strategy belongs to everyone, including you. If you think this is impossible, you are welcome ignore this. But IF you argue against it, please be kind enough to post a rational argument and not just a blanket denial. Otherwise, try it out yourself, experiment with it, mix it up, do anything to prove by your account if this build is viable or not. By then, you can post any argument you want with the benefit of personal experience.
Original post for those curious as to how this got started...
The goal of this thread is honestly, to come up with a game breaking technique for terran by maxing out abuse of mules. How does this end supply depots? We'll get to this soon.
I'll be stating a lot of stuff, backed up by with rough math. But I admit this is all theory craft at this point. I'll be refining this as we go - but I wanted to share my conclusions. If anyone is interested in helping me figure out how to absolutely abuse the ideas that follow - please contribute.
I came away pretty shocked at how incredibly broken mules are. I broke out excel and ran some calculations. The key point is I came away with is that once built, it takes around 3:20 for terran to pay for an orbital command plus 10 scvs (if people are curious I can share the xls).
The other key number is 4 orbital commands. That's the number of orbital commands required to call down enough mules to mine ~800 minerals per minute (the same as a fully saturated base).
Mules
Mules are incredible. So incredible that I think they may legitimately break the game if used to their fullest potential. An orbital command can put down a mule every ~85 seconds. A mule lasts 90 seconds and mines 180 minerals per minute. For comparison, 3 scvs mining a mineral patch will produce ~100 minerals per minute (about 40/35/25 if mining the same patch according to my tests). So in one sense a mule comes pretty close to being worth 5-6 scvs. A great ability that you can constantly use.
But the part where mules become broken is their ability to oversaturate a mineral patch. Every base in SC2 has 8 patches. In order to get 6 SCVs to mine 200 minerals a second, it takes up 2 mineral patches. A fully saturated base will mine 800 minerals per minute and require 24 scvs.
Mules on the other hand can mine 180 minerals a second regardless of how many other workers are there. With 24 scvs and 4 mules mining at a single base you should be able to mine roughly 1520 minerals a second. That's the same as two fully saturated expansions.
So 4 mules is roughly equal to a fully saturated base...so what?
4 Mules are much better than a fully saturated expansion.
In order to put together a fully saturated base, it costs money. You need to build the command center, and you need to build 24 workers, those 24 workers need to eat - so you also gotta build supply depots.
The true cost of an SCV is 50 minerals plus 1 supply (using a supply depot, a supply is worth 12.5 minerals) - so an SCV is costs 62.5 minerals. 24 of these will cost you 1500 minerals + 400 for the command center.
So it costs 1900 minerals to build and fully saturate an expansion - the CC itself is only ~25% of the total cost - the vast majority is in the workers and supply.
Why does this matter? 1900 minerals is a lot. It costs you that much to take a natural and fully saturate - this is why FE is pretty risky. Taking a quick third and fully saturating both bases will cost you 3800 minerals. Thats a metric shit ton. In this game, its generally not economically feasible to saturate a third base before your main is nearly mined out because of the cost in workers. Additionally, because workers take up supply, building 90 workers to fully saturate 3 bases will leave you with a paper army compared to someone 2 basing. Chances are pretty good, you won't hold that third (we see this happen time and again with zergs who take a third as a response to a FE - they simply do not have enough money to saturate and build any remote defense).
So most of the time, we all have to be content with a max income of around 1500 minerals per minute (2 fully saturated bases). It's almost impossible to exceed this (aside from golds, which we'll ignore for a bit).
Mules break all those rules
So here is where we finally get to the interesting shit. Mules are the only unit in SC that can completely break the above. A terran player capable of rolling out 4 mules on 2 fully saturated bases will mine ~2200 minerals per minute. This is realistically more than any other race can do. If you get really ambitious, a terran player capable of rolling out 8 mules on two bases will mine ~3000 minerals per minute. Thats equal to 4 fully saturated bases. With an income that high, you should be able to produce a marine every second.
But it's not possible to get a steady stream of 8 mules!
Well. Not if you play conventionally but I think that in order to play terran to its maximum potential, you should not play remotely like any other race, nor should you play as the designers intended, because AS TERRAN YOU SHOULD WORK HARD TO NEVER BUILD A SUPPLY DEPOT.
Well. Ok. You need that first one to get a barraks. But lets ignore that first depot. Let me say it again...
AS TERRAN YOU WORK HARD TO NEVER BUILD A SUPPLY DEPOT.
Command centers are always economically better for supply. Why? Because supply depots suck. They're just lost minerals AND they get killed easy leaving you supply blocked. If you can possibly arrange a way to afford it, you should ALWAYS BUILD COMMAND CENTERS FOR FOOD. Why? Because in ADDITION TO BUILDING WORKERS FASTER, THEY GIVE YOU MULES AND ALLOW YOU TO OVERSATURATE.
A command center gives you 11 food, this is worth 137 minerals in supply (depot gives 8 @ 100 minerals). The actual cost of a command center is really 263 minerals, the orbital is another 150. Using ONLY MULES the orbital command will pay for itself in about 3:20 (550 minerals) - a single mule will pay for the command center using its food adjusted cost in 90 seconds. After this, unlike a supply depot the orbital command will begin to improve your income. Dramatically. If you can get 2 orbital commands, the mules alone will entirely pay for a constant stream of additional orbital commands. What does this mean? Well. It means that you could have 8 orbital commands in around 9 minutes, and an income of 3,000 minerals per minute (equivilant to 4 fully saturated bases). Obviously, it won't always be possible to avoid building depots.But the point is that this is something you should try very hard to avoid. A supply depot does not improve your income. Orbital commands do. Two will completely pay for a third in mule income alone, 3 will give you 540 minerals / minute, allowing you to continue pumping out additional CCs in mass (paid for by mules alone).
So let me just review. Using your main, and your natural, you can have an income equvalent to 4 fully saturated bases. This mechanic is absolutely unparalleled by anything the other two races have -- and we haven't even started looking into planetary fortresses as incredibly cost effective defense yet.
Theorycraft I admit completely that this thread is theorycrafting at its best. But I wanted to put this post up so that I could eventually take credit for the inevitable nerf on Mules . I'll be adding builds, replays as I have time.
In the mean time, please feel free to add suggestions, think it out, try builds. The best I did was a 14 CC 15 rax with my 4th orbital at ~ 6 minutes. I walled off the natural with CCs and 2 bunkers. I had an income of 2200-2400 at 9 minutes. I'm sure this is viable.
EDIT:
Griffith has posted a build with high diamond replays showing that this is viable.
I think the optimal strategy is a 100% all in at around 12 minutes. This would include all scvs - since they're really sort of unnecessary at that point. But truth is - you can just fly CCs all over the place, land, throw down nothing but mules, lift if theres any remote threat... with around 8 CCs it doesn't really matter if one or two die since your workers were free.
Honestly, this has the potential to break the game - it redefines how the fundamental mechanics and balance of the game work. The trick is figuring out how to keep alive for around 9 minutes while building command centers. I think planetary fortresses may have a legit role here.
Again, I am going to have replays and shit when I get more time.
On December 02 2010 17:15 twalf wrote: and then you're mined out. crap. at least you can float all your 550-mineral orbitals around to confuse your opponent
And you are 100+ food ahead of the other player, since he hasn't even mined half of his minerals on 2 bases =)
First off, I'd like to say that it's awesome to see all the math for this. Well done, sir.
On December 02 2010 17:19 30to1 wrote:Honestly, this has the potential to break the game - it redefines how the fundamental mechanics and balance of the game work. The trick is figuring out how to keep alive for around 9 minutes while building command centers. I think planetary fortresses may have a legit role here.
Whoa, whoa. Calm down a sec. That sounds a big extreme. Try that out, sure. But after that try to think of a more gradual approach, because if you can get to a mid or late game where you don't have to spend any supply on workers, you can have a pretty large Terran ball.
Very interesting and well thought out post. This kind of idea had occurred to me before, but since I don't play terran I didn't have any motivation or reason to test it out. I can't really think of any reason why this wouldn't work to be honest. A little worrying haha
How many cc's can you fit on the average island expo..ie lost temple or desert oasis. Considering they can fly and take no space while gaining mama over time is broken. I would like to see this used in replays
I considered this but always assumed command centers take too long to build for this to be viable. That plus Orbitals are huge and you can't burrow them so they make moving around in your base way harder.
I think that you're ignoring one of the essential timings to this, which is the time it takes to build a command center, especially your first one or two. Yes, the mules will pay for them later but you're leaving yourself a lot of timings in the early game when you are investing heavily in command centers to 1. get mules/workers 2. get supply. all those minerals could have gone to more barracks or more marines or both, so if a competent player sees this type of build, he can just rush you to death.
this is if you're cutting out all supply depots as said, so you're trying to build your first CC at 14 supply ish. Still this is me theorycrafting... so good luck with it!
This sound like an awesome strategy if you center it around a gigantic ~20 worker, 180 supply army 200/200 attack off 2 bases when maxed. So you basically skip workers for almost everything but gas and spam mules and get an insanely powerful max and then attack, and while attacking you can triple expand or something.
So basically a great idea, I'd love to try this.
On December 02 2010 17:30 theherder2 wrote: I think that you're ignoring one of the essential timings to this, which is the time it takes to build a command center, especially your first one or two. Yes, the mules will pay for them later but you're leaving yourself a lot of timings in the early game when you are investing heavily in command centers to 1. get mules/workers 2. get supply. all those minerals could have gone to more barracks or more marines or both, so if a competent player sees this type of build, he can just rush you to death.
this is if you're cutting out all supply depots as said, so you're trying to build your first CC at 14 supply ish. Still this is me theorycrafting... so good luck with it!
Meh, you can just do 1rax cc normally and build one extra depot.
Also, I don't get why you would have to move them around in your base. Just plant them down in the corner with some Sim City placement, you don't actually have to float all of them anywhere, just float one over to an expansion and mule there.
It takes a long time to build up your CC count in the early game. A possible answer is walling with the CC's and building up tanks behind them. Still gotta worry about the air so marine/tank maybe?
On December 02 2010 17:31 Shikyo wrote: This sound like an awesome strategy if you center it around a gigantic ~20 worker, 180 supply army 200/200 attack off 2 bases when maxed. So you basically skip workers for almost everything but gas and spam mules and get an insanely powerful max and then attack, and while attacking you can triple expand or something.
On December 02 2010 17:30 theherder2 wrote: I think that you're ignoring one of the essential timings to this, which is the time it takes to build a command center, especially your first one or two. Yes, the mules will pay for them later but you're leaving yourself a lot of timings in the early game when you are investing heavily in command centers to 1. get mules/workers 2. get supply. all those minerals could have gone to more barracks or more marines or both, so if a competent player sees this type of build, he can just rush you to death.
this is if you're cutting out all supply depots as said, so you're trying to build your first CC at 14 supply ish. Still this is me theorycrafting... so good luck with it!
Meh, you can just do 1rax cc normally and build one extra depot.
I think the advantage would max at around 12 minutes if its possible to get a ~3k income at 10 without getting killed. My first not shitty build had mined a total of 10,700 minerals at exactly 10 minutes, stopping CC production here and just spamming army/mule would mean around 16,000 minerals worth of crap at 12 minutes. That should honestly just be more than any other race can possibly handle.
On December 02 2010 17:35 deji wrote: Well done, sir.
I will have to test this build out on the ladder.
Also, I don't get why you would have to move them around in your base. Just plant them down in the corner with some Sim City placement, you don't actually have to float all of them anywhere, just float one over to an expansion and mule there.
This is still extreme theory. I would try various builds out first to figure out how to make it reasonably survivable first (obviously).
I will also post my best build when I get a little more time to try out more shit - again I think fitting in an engineering bay and PF early on might be a good way (PF is the most cost effective defense in game, especially since your scvs aren't really needed to continue income).
This is a really nice idea, but I'm wondering about 1 thing. How long does it take for an Orbital Command to pay itself back, starting from when you start building the command center, and including the mining time lost by the SCV building it? I think the 90 seconds you stated with the MULE is a bit misleading.
Still, it might be very worthwhile to start using Orbital commands to build walls. I'm definitely going to try this out when I play Terran some time.
Well, actually i has a lot of sense, not the part of build 0 supply depots, but the part to buy lots of OC (like 4-8) to keep casting mules and some PF in strategic places could give u enough time to be a beast in mid-late game while harvesting half map. I have to try this.
P.D:
Thats to many mules, but if u can cast 10-15 of them should be enough
dont forget that when you reach a critical mass in OCs you can have unlimited scans and you can makd supply depots that you DID have to make, twice as good xD
i have thought about this but timing attacks would totally rock you since it does cost the same; but you are delayed significantly EDIT: i think this would work actually, but only for tvz and tvp ofc. just turtle like a champion with the ccs and by the time they have the tech to break the turtle you wont be turtling anymore and will be able to make mass destruction balls
This reminds me of the BM mules used during the iCCup extravaganza on Asteroid Field, where a player used about 10-15 OCs to completely deplete an enemy expansion.
if this did work, it would be better to have a larger map with an untouchable expansion where you can float a OC and just mine it out. like islands on LT or behind the rocks on scrap station. could work on steppes but with a short rush ur bound to get attacked early.
On December 02 2010 17:44 Roban wrote: This is a really nice idea, but I'm wondering about 1 thing. How long does it take for an Orbital Command to pay itself back, starting from when you start building the command center, and including the mining time lost by the SCV building it? I think the 90 seconds you stated with the MULE is a bit misleading.
Still, it might be very worthwhile to start using Orbital commands to build walls. I'm definitely going to try this out when I play Terran some time.
You're right! It is a little misleading.
Total build time including orbital is 155 seconds and it will take 200 seconds to earn 608 minerals + 10 scvs (there is funny math with mule income and constant scv production cost / income). My math is rough, but thats about it.
So yes, there is certainly a strong weakness at around 5 minutes if you rush straight for mass orbital. After this - the returns start to kick in really fast.
EDIT: theoretically you should be a more vulnerable than a zerg FE - but your returns should kick in faster, and you get mules regardless of if you build army. Plus, you can salvage bunkers and PF is ridiculous...
On December 02 2010 17:35 deji wrote: Well done, sir.
I will have to test this build out on the ladder.
Also, I don't get why you would have to move them around in your base. Just plant them down in the corner with some Sim City placement, you don't actually have to float all of them anywhere, just float one over to an expansion and mule there.
This is still extreme theory. I would try various builds out first to figure out how to make it reasonably survivable first (obviously).
I will also post my best build when I get a little more time to try out more shit - again I think fitting in an engineering bay and PF early on might be a good way (PF is the most cost effective defense in game, especially since your scvs aren't really needed to continue income).
What I thought about, is early game, place two (or four?) CC's at your ramp so you form a tunnel to your base and put marines on the other side. Lings and roaches don't have the range to shoot the marines, but marines should have the range to shoot lings and roaches in the tunnel. Put a bunker at the end of the tunnel. There should be no way he can push in through there.
Then tech to tanks/pull SCVs to repair to stop him from killing the CC's from the ramp where you don't have the range to shoot with marines.
You don't have to expand from your base until it's mined out if you go for a unit mix light on gas and use 24SCVs+mules.
On December 02 2010 17:35 deji wrote: Well done, sir.
I will have to test this build out on the ladder.
Also, I don't get why you would have to move them around in your base. Just plant them down in the corner with some Sim City placement, you don't actually have to float all of them anywhere, just float one over to an expansion and mule there.
This is still extreme theory. I would try various builds out first to figure out how to make it reasonably survivable first (obviously).
I will also post my best build when I get a little more time to try out more shit - again I think fitting in an engineering bay and PF early on might be a good way (PF is the most cost effective defense in game, especially since your scvs aren't really needed to continue income).
What I thought about, is early game, place two (or four?) CC's at your ramp so you form a tunnel to your base and put marines on the other side. Lings and roaches don't have the range to shoot the marines, but marines should have the range to shoot lings and roaches in the tunnel. Put a barracks at the end of the tunnel. There should be no way he can push in through there.
Then tech to tanks/pull SCVs to repair to stop him from killing the CC's from the ramp where you don't have the range to shoot with marines.
You don't have to expand from your base until it's mined out if you go for a unit mix light on gas and use 24SCVs+mules.
I think that you need to expand with the CC on 14, the extra SCV income matter. Further, I mined out my main in under 10 minutes in one build where I didn't expand. Seriously.
EDIT: I think the trick is just walling off the natural instead of main. CCs have a huge footprint, you can cut off a giant area with them and if the natural is threatened, you can just float it... you still build energy while floating so you won't lose mule income.
My immediate reaction after that is "but there is absolutely no way...."
Still brilliant, though... My thinking on the matter is it won't work because a command center takes 100 seconds to build, and then a further 35 seconds to morph into an orbital command. You had to bank 400 minerals to even begin this process. So it means your investment of 400 returns nothing for over TWO MINUTES of game time. By contrast, it takes 17 seconds to build an scv and it starts building immediately. So it seems you would need to start the game playing standard in order to be at all competitive. So you get a couple depots to get 30ish workers on 2 bases and then start massing command centers since you have the income to build them in parallel. Very economically focused build, you would need heavy bunkering to not die to a timing push, if it's possible at all.
This style needs a name. Seriously. Orbital style? Eh. Whatever. I'm going to go try this right now.
This is an interesting analysis, but a few problems immediately come to mind:
1) Gas is the scarce resource in SC2, not minerals. Unless you want a 200/200 Marine army, trying to max your mineral income will just leave you with lots of excess minerals stockpiling while you wait for the next 100 gas to come in
2) It takes a long time to build a CC, so you can't possibly keep up with the rate at which you need to add supply. You are going to get supply blocked.
3) Periodically spending 400 minerals on supply is going to mess with your macro. Instead of maintaining constant production while adding depots, there will be long (5-10 second) periods where you are not producing anything while you save up 400 minerals.
I'm interested to see where this line of thinking will end up though. Props to the OP for thinking outside the box, this is the kind of thing we need to see more of in this game imo~
Nice analysis, but this will stay on paper and theorycraft only. This will not work in real game. FuRong sort out some of the reasons. One more thing to notice though: Beside mineral and gas. Time is also an resource in SC/SC2. Your analysis completely ignore that. You can build CC instead of supply but as you say, the CC will only pay for itself after ~4 mins, and you need to build several CCs. Waste all that time is gonna be brutal.
1) Gas is the scarce resource in SC2, not minerals.
Not if you mine out every single base on the map in 25 minutes :D
24SCVs + 10 mules should mine around what, 2500 minerals per minute? That would mine out an expansion in like 4-5 minutes.. plus this stuff works exponentially, the more minerals you get, the more you can make CCs, the faster you can mine everything out.
Doesn't sound too viable building a command center for supply considering how long they take to make. This kind of stuff is pretty cool late game though, I've seen games where Drewbie sacs all of his SCVs but a few to gain more supply and builds more orbitals so he can continue mining constantly.
why are you all thinking in terms of early game? Why not play normally early to mid, then after you're going to take a third (presumably gold) start saccing scv's with your main army. This could have enormous potential late game as mules > any normal worker. Also, it frees up supply for your main army. After every engagement, your army can come back just a little bit stronger until you overrun the enemy with 200/200 food of pure army.
On December 02 2010 17:31 Shikyo wrote: This sound like an awesome strategy if you center it around a gigantic ~20 worker, 180 supply army 200/200 attack off 2 bases when maxed. So you basically skip workers for almost everything but gas and spam mules and get an insanely powerful max and then attack, and while attacking you can triple expand or something.
So basically a great idea, I'd love to try this.
On December 02 2010 17:30 theherder2 wrote: I think that you're ignoring one of the essential timings to this, which is the time it takes to build a command center, especially your first one or two. Yes, the mules will pay for them later but you're leaving yourself a lot of timings in the early game when you are investing heavily in command centers to 1. get mules/workers 2. get supply. all those minerals could have gone to more barracks or more marines or both, so if a competent player sees this type of build, he can just rush you to death.
this is if you're cutting out all supply depots as said, so you're trying to build your first CC at 14 supply ish. Still this is me theorycrafting... so good luck with it!
Meh, you can just do 1rax cc normally and build one extra depot.
I think the advantage would max at around 12 minutes if its possible to get a ~3k income at 10 without getting killed. My first not shitty build had mined a total of 10,700 minerals at exactly 10 minutes, stopping CC production here and just spamming army/mule would mean around 16,000 minerals worth of crap at 12 minutes. That should honestly just be more than any other race can possibly handle.
12 minutes is a really really long time without seeing your opponent.
Independent of it is usable ingame or not I really appreciate the Theorycraft. I am up to incorperate the decreasing opportunity costs of Nexi-Psy (in Combination with a gain in Chronoboost) into my own builds, but this stuff is far more abusive. OC's are just _so_ versatile its not even fun :[
Nice theory crafting, though I suspect that this tactic will never work in anything higher than bronze league id be interested to see a replay that proves me wrong however.
my mechball is like a mini version of this lol. mules and like 14 scvs and the rest sac to repair. keep up w/ mule timing and u won't need that many scvs to mine mine.
Oh, also, since you aren't using your OCs for gathering themselves or unit production, it is possible to use them as a sort of "Mobile Wall-Off" depending on the situation.
The nexus ability doesn't even compare to the versatility of OC energy. Chrono energy basically allows protoss to spend money faster. But the problem is that spending it faster doesn't matter if you can't gather it fast enough. So there is a some what balance between when to spend the money and gathering money. OC's on the otherhand gathers money faster. Gathering is the only real limit in any race; you can't spend without gathering. So because the OC gathers while not taking minerals to invest (harvesters), there will be more flexibility in the amount of investment.
I dunno if that made much sense, but it sure seems broken that you can gain without spending supply.
On December 02 2010 18:38 Tossup wrote: The nexus ability doesn't even compare to the versatility of OC energy. Chrono energy basically allows protoss to spend money faster. But the problem is that spending it faster doesn't matter if you can't gather it fast enough. So there is a some what balance between when to spend the money and gathering money. OC's on the otherhand gathers money faster. Gathering is the only real limit in any race; you can't spend without gathering. So because the OC gathers while not taking minerals to invest (harvesters), there will be more flexibility in the amount of investment.
I dunno if that made much sense, but it sure seems broken that you can gain without spending supply.
Actually, if Protoss use its Chrono boost only on probe making. They will have a very large amount of probe in midgame. I think Blizzard will tweak the MULE somehow to make it less usable. Maybe decrease the amount of minerals the MULE mine is a good thing to do.
As already mentioned, it think you forgot the lost mining time for an scv that builds the command center / depot.
For <=16 SCVs the income per second and SCV is about 0,7 Minerals/sec.
=> a depot costs actually 135 Minerals => a CC costs actually 470 Minerals
Considering the Supply a CC costs 470 Minerals - 11/8*135minerals = 284,38 Minerals and a SCV costs 66,88 Minerals.
Adding the 150 Minerals of the Orbital Command its (284,38 +150 = 434,35) Minerals for an income of 3,17 Minerals / second (270/85).
3,17 Minerals / second is equivalent with 4,54 SCVs @ 0,7 Minerals / second.
So it is 434,35 for the "pure orbital strategy" vs 303,64 mineral costs with a standard strategy not using mules (which would get even more effective if using mules).
=> its not really broken as long there is absolutley no saturation effect on the minerals (0,7 Minerals/sec).
However, according to my calculations the SCVs #17 to #20 generate each an income of about 0,37 Minerals/sec. Taking this as a calculation base its 434,35 Minerals for orbital strat vs 573 Minerals for a standard strat not using mules.
I am currently not sure how to consider the mules in a standard strategy, but as i practical result I'd say (more guess) that, at the point you have already 16 SCVs on Minerals at all your expansions, start building Orbital Commands only instead of Depots and SCVs.
very nice idea, i had something similar up my mind some time ago, but didnt follow it any further.
i dont think completely skipping depots besides the first one is viable, but after a certain point its surely a good idea.
but i dont think its feasible to rush straight for the mass orbitals in the earlygame or early midgame. but as a lategame strategy, it might be a brilliant idea.
one of the main problems with terran in sc2 is the (perceived) lategame weakness. and this weakness is due to a maxed mech army not being nearly as strong as in bw. now, what if we can sac scvs somewhere in the late midgame during one of our timing pushes and then replace them by mules from mass orbitals? imagine how strong a 170 supply mech army would be..... 20 tanks, 12 thors and either 30 marines or 15 hellions. fearsome.
some other potential benefits of getting rather early additional orbitals: the more ccs u got, the more easily u can replace scvs lost to harass. and the more mules u got, the less the potential scv losses will hurt ur income. it also means permanent scans.
the other major problem i see besides the early game vulnerability is how mass mules would mean that u burn through expos much faster, so u have to secure new expansions really early on, which makes u rather spread out and vulnerable.
ROFL, when I read a little bit, I was thinking... how do you get supply for your army then? Then I realised that CCs give you supply! haha, this sounds very interesting, gonna maybe try it out one day.
Also to add, I was listening to an interview where someone talked about endgame terran play where they sacrifice their SCVs for a bigger army and just use mules to mine.
Time seems like a huge problem with replacing depots with CCs. Once you have the production facilities to use one base worth of money, you basically need continuous depot production to avoid getting supply blocked. With 2 base worth of production, it usually takes pretty close to double constant depots.
I can't seem to get on liquidpedia atm, but supply depots take what, 30-40 seconds or something like that (I don't recall off the top of my head). A command center is 100 seconds IIRC, and 10 supply - and we need OCs to Mule, so that's another 40 seconds IIRC.. So you'll nearly need to build command centers at the same rate as depots to avoid getting blocked. Even without SCV production, you'll still need more supply than the equivalent of constant single depot production off two base.
That means additional CCs will have to be started before the first ones finishes, and well in advance of when the player needs supply. To provide supply for the second Thor coming out of a factory, the CC has to be started before first Thor even begins.
So to replace depots with CCs, you're essentially committing an extra 600 minerals before you see single crystal from the additional mules.
Fast expanding seems viable (a lot of pros expand off one or two rax). Adding additional OCs for mass mules seems like it could be fantastic later in the game when players often have extra money.
However, building additional OCs early after fast expanding is a massive investment in non-army exactly when most vulnerable. That extra 300 or so from the 2nd CC you build could have been two additional rax. Successful FE builds tend to boost their production levels ASAP to get enough units to repel one base assaults - 1 rax into CC tends to become 3 rax and factory, or 4 rax. And there's still a window of vulnerability against a lot of builds that Terran covers with bunkers, protoss often pulls probes to defend its one gate FE, etc. Spending additional money on economy at that point is going to vastly extend that period of weakness.
OK I just tried this a few times. I didn't win any of them so I won't post replays. It was fairly straightforward.
A couple things I noticed quickly- #1 gas requires SCV's, as does building structures and to all intents and purposes so does repairing. Yes, mules can technically repair but generally you want them mining and it sucks to call down a mule just to repair some barracks or missile turret. This means you can't actually cut a lot of scv's and rely on mules, at least early on. SCV's are too useful, and provide dependable, constant, no-hassle mining.
#2- you NEVER get to scan, damn. You would think you have so many orbital commands that scan would be cheap. Not at ALL the case. You are so dependent on mules for minerals that you must use all OC energy on mules. Missing a mule because you used a scan cuts into your income BADLY. I suppose if you got 15+ orbital commands this problem would go away, but it won't happen.
#3- generally you will want to use supply drop on your first (necessary) depot because the first command center doesn't finish in time to avoid you getting supply blocked.
#4- a typical main actually has surprisingly little room where you can build command centers, or park orbital commands. You run out of room in your base almost immediately.
#5- very economically focused. Perhaps too much so. Investing 2000+ minerals in four additional orbital commands will get you killed if someone invests that in units.
#6- OMG THE MONEY when it works. I actually got into the mid/late game a couple times doing this, and every time I had more money than I could spend. More barracks, more factories, more starports, more orbital commands, still more money than I could spend. Typically my macro is quite good, but HOLY SHIT the money. Biggest issue is that it's entirely minerals, gas can be hard to come by at this stage. Also you mine out expos faster than you can give them a suspicious look.
#7- the biggest weakness is the other player will just make bases normally all over the map. Especially if they are zerg. Hatches only cost 300, about half what an orbital command costs, and they start paying off sooner, and in much greater volume, more constantly. They can and will take two hatcheries for each orbital command you have in your main. I learned the hard way that you cannot ninja people with orbital commands at other mains. They will find them and they will kill them. Extensive use of planetary fortresses and missile turrets is very good with this build.
So while you're investing in orbital commands for a long term economic edge, the other player is taking more bases and already has more units than you. They take too long to start paying dividends if you are building the command center just to turn it into an orbital command. However the command center, used normally, is worth the 400 minerals by itself because you're taking a base.
I feel like I only lost because I didn't spend my money as fast as I was making it. Perhaps one of these S-class players would be able to fine tune this build and make it work. It feels like it has a lot of potential, but it's extremely different from typical play. I love the idea, but it seems like it's impossible to do while simultaneously harassing. 4 hellions could have been a command center, for example.
I'm going to go try some less extreme forms of this style, using only 1-2 in-base orbital commands and getting them later. Perhaps this style will be more viable if you start using it later- money is too tight early on for such long-term investments to work.
Using the supply drop is actually VERY cost effective if you have multiple orbital command centers.
I just did a dry "no plans just make shit" run and i had a 200/200 marine/viking army in about 14 minutes with 3 bases mining(the 200/200 army came out as the mining started off the 3rd base).
With some tweaking i will be able to easily make a 200/200 marine/viking/medivac army with at Least 2 bases at the 11-12 minute mark.
WOW!
Edit: 1 important thing to understand:
If you lose a supply depot with a "drop" on it you lose even more supply. So be careful.
Another thing to note is that if you constantly send marines at your opponent you dont have to build as many supply depots.
On December 02 2010 19:35 ledarsi wrote: Cryosin you are full of it. There is no way you can get a 200/200 army in 14 minutes with this build. It's beyond impossible.
I mean seriously, when did your orbital commands finish? Post the replay please.
I wont post replays because i dont want people to know my new account for various reasons.
But it IS possible.
You can 2 rax and then build a CC. instead of building supply depots use your orbital command.
Then build another CC and a shit ton of barracks.
and then use mules and orbital supply drops to keep your economy going while you pump out marines.
When your main becomes fully saturated you can just lift off and take map control(around 10 minutes).
At around 12 minutes you should be pumping non stop units.
The main vulnerability is something like an all-in baneling bust. Or really any all-in strategy. 4-gate could be scary but not as bad. Any rush past 7 minutes wont be viable against this build.
There is nothing unusual about getting a 200 army at 14 minutes, btw. If you play Zerg and non-stop drone you could pump out a mass 200/200 zergling army with hatcheries and lings quicker than you think(around 14-15 minutes i believe).
It's a natural thing to try. The obvious question is, do you have a window to mass OCs? Or will the opponent develop too much of an army/base lead to overcome with your mass mules?
A quick calculation - Supply Depot > OC in cost-for-supply for the first four minutes after you start building, OC > Supply Depot after that.
@Cryosin, you're actually serious about that in a real game? What's the use of pumping pure marines and getting 200 pop army, it's just useless
and it will take a long time for you to build loads of orbitals, and even longer for them to pay back enough for a sizeable army. It's not possible to get 200pop army using the build by 14minutes.
On December 02 2010 19:48 Cryosin wrote: You can 2 rax and then build a CC. instead of building supply depots use your orbital command.
Thats actually not cost effective. Although you might not want to build supply depots with this build it would still be more effective to build them instead of using supply calldown.
Not sure exactly how good it is. Did a simple 2-supply 1-rax wall-off (constantly producing 'Rines) with quick CC and Orbital, against a medium bot.
With lag and horrible micro I barely held the first push by pulling SCVs, although the second push favored me more. At that time I had a solid gas production with several Reactor Rax active. While supply blocking was never an issue, the enemy attacks were. First test isn't too promising, but I'd say there's something to dig into.
I think later in the game where you've been stockpiling energy, it can even be used as a tool for harrassing. Imagine floating a CC into the expansion your opponent is most likely to go for, and then depleting it.
On December 02 2010 19:48 Cryosin wrote: You can 2 rax and then build a CC. instead of building supply depots use your orbital command.
Thats actually not cost effective. Although you might not want to build supply depots with this build it would still be more effective to build them instead of using supply calldown.
Ya i had to cut production like i said it was a dry run. You would want to 1 rax then build another CC. The nice thing is you can saturate your main very quickly and tech switch when you expand.
I think this is something that might be very powerful against Zerg but not so much against Terran. Possibly good against Protoss but it really depends on how you play it out.
More testing is needed but it is something cool. The really cool part is how the command center gives you 11 supply. Its obviously not cost effective to build a command center for just supply but if you time it right its actually very good.
You can build a sizable marine ball and then double expand around 9 minutes. I used marines because it would be simple to test. You could obviously tweak the build but leaving an early command center in your base to pump some SCV's is actually not a bad idea at all.
I think the main advantage of this comes in mid-late game, not at the beginning. The real issue I see with Mules is that you can increase your economy infinitely in terms of minerals compared to Z and P having to stop at ~70-80 drones due to the impact on their army size. And as mentioned before, you can sacrifice SCVs in late game as well to make your army 50-60 supply bigger than your enemy. I would like to see how this works if you start massing OC more less when you normally pop your third (with main and first exp saturated).
Yeah there are some mech heavy turtle strats against which you have nearly no chance to engange and want to make mass expansions yourself. If terran builds mass CC during that time it would be pretty good i think.
This would really shine late game since you can basically land one of your OC at an expo and spam mules, draining at all the minerals that you can to stop the opponent to try and take newer expos. 15 or so mules at a mineral line is going to eat it up so quickly that if your enemy finds out about it, half the minerals are gone and you didnt waste a single mineral and supply building a scv to mine minerals. Of course, gas is still a factor here so maybe 6 scvs per base/expansion to mine gas only could help
There is no way you can have 200/200 marines using this build at 14 minutes.
Let's suppose that is 150 marines, with 50 scvs. 150 marines takes 3750 barracks-seconds to build. If you have 6 barracks that is 11 minutes, 15 seconds of constant marine production. So you would need to have 6 barracks at 3:45 in game time. In practice you would have fewer barracks early, more barracks later, which is fine. But there is no way you can meet that much production time if you have 3 or more orbital commands, much less the 8+ that this build suggests.
how in the world are you getting that htis means they are broken. Terrans are already getting outmacroed by other races lategame, this is not an issue.
This is a very interesting post. To everyone replying to this, don't think of culminating this into a mass CC/OC strategy. Think of this more as something to keep in mind when you macro yourself. If the OP's math is really correct, it'll basically mean that adding a CC just to be able to get more mules out will be a viable option. That's kind of scary.
On December 02 2010 17:48 CortoMontez wrote: This reminds me of the BM mules used during the iCCup extravaganza on Asteroid Field, where a player used about 10-15 OCs to completely deplete an enemy expansion.
that sounds absolutely brilliant. Is there a replay for this you know of?
I've done this with various permutations a dozen times or so.
The biggest issue is that you typically build a command center because you want the base, and the orbital command is just a bonus. It actually takes quite some time for the orbital command to pay for itself if you're relying on mules to earn back its entire cost. True, the flat value is 550 so 2 mules technically do the job. However that's terrible because you invested 400, and don't see any return on it until 135 seconds later, including an additional investment of 150 later. It comes down to how much you value money now vs later. 550 minerals now (assuming you're committed to the OC at CC construction) in exchange for +3 minerals per second, starting in 135 seconds. It feels like the OC doesn't really start being worth it until about 4-5 or more mules later, assuming you stop using the money to make more orbital commands.
OC farming is a huge down payment, but a big payoff in the long term. The most success I've had with it is taking a fast expand, thats 2 OCs already without needing to do anything too strange. The 3rd cc is begun when your two mules start being profitable. If possible, fly it to an island and missile turret the heck out of it.
Now things start getting weird. Firstly, after the 3rd is up and running, get the Neosteel Frame upgrade at the engineering bay. You could do this before the 3rd, but you would have to morph it to an OC when it reached the island, since orbitals have no scv storage capacity. The purpose of this upgrade is that you will be using command centers for your at-risk expansions. With this upgrade a CC has 10 scv storage, enough for 6 on gas and 4 additional workers. You can pick up all ten and lift off it the enemy shows up. Bases very far away from the enemy will get more orbital commands, and bases that are not on the front lines, but not especially far away either will be planetary fortresses. For example, mains in metalopolis get OCs, naturals get PFs, golds are CC's with only 10 scvs, relying on mules for mining. Move the OC originally built in your natural to another base and put a PF there.
It seems like the extra money gained from an orbital command greatly reduces the threshold of economy needed to justify building another command center. Command centers are just useful structures considering you can (with Neosteel) have limited mining at a base with almost zero risk.
Terran's options for serious map control are limited, but in order to seriously capture the entire map you're going to need to try hard. A siege tank contain is clearly the best possible option but this might be impossible.
let me cite a few limitations: 1. it is time bound, as there comes a time (is it 12 min OP?) when the "build" maxes its potential 2. it is extremely dependent on opponents scouting and reaction (but hey, if you're playing terran, what's one thing that you can do best: turtle) 3. it is also map dependent, as you need to have a good amount of space in your main and expos should be strategically near and defensible enough (steppes of war?)
without credible test to it yet, i can say that +1 roach or early bling 4min push will give this some trouble. or any early game effective aggression for that matter. needs to be tested tho.
On December 02 2010 19:48 Cryosin wrote: You can 2 rax and then build a CC. instead of building supply depots use your orbital command.
Thats actually not cost effective. Although you might not want to build supply depots with this build it would still be more effective to build them instead of using supply calldown.
Not entirely true.
fact 1: each base has a limited amount of resources fact 2: you will more than likely mine out your main base fact 3: you reap the benefits instantly.
so while the mule will make the money faster, you lose that money forever. mule is still better, but supply calldown is not horrible by any means. to avoid supply cap id say for first cpl of ccs tp use supply cd instead.
Conrose December 02 2010 18:32. Oh, also, since you aren't using your OCs for gathering themselves or unit production, it is possible to use them as a sort of "Mobile Wall-Off" depending on the situation.
OMG! Like a mobile reparable semi-permanent massive force field?!! This is trully revolutionary. Praxis needed!
On December 02 2010 19:48 Cryosin wrote: You can 2 rax and then build a CC. instead of building supply depots use your orbital command.
Thats actually not cost effective. Although you might not want to build supply depots with this build it would still be more effective to build them instead of using supply calldown.
Not entirely true.
fact 1: each base has a limited amount of resources fact 2: you will more than likely mine out your main base fact 3: you reap the benefits instantly.
so while the mule will make the money faster, you lose that money forever. mule is still better, but supply calldown is not horrible by any means. to avoid supply cap id say for first cpl of ccs tp use supply cd instead.
Well this limited amount of resources argument comes only into play when you have no access to other resources - which happens when you don't or can't move out of your base - so your opponent usually can expand and mine more than you - or when the whole map is mined out. And comparing supply calldown with a virtual equal opponent who is using mules instead he would have mined more than you and you would lose anyway.
Conrose December 02 2010 18:32. Oh, also, since you aren't using your OCs for gathering themselves or unit production, it is possible to use them as a sort of "Mobile Wall-Off" depending on the situation.
OMG! Like a mobile reparable semi-permanent massive force field?!! This is trully revolutionary. Praxis needed!
Every Terran building can do this. Barracks are the most natural choice since they're cheap and durable.
Conrose December 02 2010 18:32. Oh, also, since you aren't using your OCs for gathering themselves or unit production, it is possible to use them as a sort of "Mobile Wall-Off" depending on the situation.
OMG! Like a mobile reparable semi-permanent massive force field?!! This is trully revolutionary. Praxis needed!
Every Terran building can do this. Barracks are the most natural choice since they're cheap and durable.
You need ALL your other building for production. Not so much with OC because you can land them and call mule anytime while they escort your army for the said purpose.
so i dont get how this thing can be gamebreaking. yes it looks pretty smart and genius to find cute facts like this ingame but all u can do with Mineral is Marine+Hellion. only 2 gas wont help you much. i tried this couple of times to see how it works on action , and really ... really its just fun , nothing more. like 3k mineral in 1 base with 3/4 CCs and 100gas? . but indeed it could work abit at lategame , yet again , doest it add a "decent" lategame unit for Terran? nah Terran's lategame remains untouched and lousey. and btw Mules are designed as an answer to hatching X drones at time or ChronoBoosting + Warping building (not spending a worker on them for 1 min or so) . while i dont think Economy is balanced in SC atm (Z>T>P) in other hand it doesnt need balance. army balance could help more than this , and some tacts like 13/14 Hatch that Actually did a good game changing to Z ,is required for Terrans. still , nice maths i liked it ;>
You shouldn't really be using the orbital commands as walls as they're too valuable, and if they die before they pay for themselves they are another massive down payment to replace.
Use barracks with supply depots as doors. 1000 hp for 150 minerals in an expendable structure beats the hell out of 1500 for 550 minerals, especially since OC's gives you 1 mule at a time for as long as they live. Fortresses MAYBE, and only because they have an additional armor and a weapon.
All the PF rushers out their are licking their chops. Seems like its map dependent, but if it got going it would be impossible to stop , if played right. 2 CCs and 2-3 PF's on Scrap Station seems pretty baller. Sets you up great for the late game.
I am very sure that in about 1-2 years mules will get a serious nerf, either requiring supply, either an increased energy requirement, either a limited number of mules that a player can have at a time, either a limited number of mules that a command center can call.
This once people will figure out how to take big advantages of using mules, like having 5 CCs on 2 bases and 8 CCs on 3 bases and having only mules and attacking with all the SCVs.
If you could survive that long it would be one hell of a timing attack, in mid/late game, pull everything and attack, then use the mules to reinforce (or even build back up, with that amount of oc's getting the scv count back up wouldn't be too bad). Bus as people have mentioned i doubt it would work, to effectively use the cc's your making you would need to be able to hold multiple expansion with a non existent army, early aggression or good harassment would crush this most likely, but its something fun to mess around with and dream!, id love to see some replays of people trying this.
I can see how this would be really risky early game but if you played "normal" at first and turtled hard with siege/pf/turrets and walled in your natural this seems like it would be game breaking.
On December 02 2010 22:04 curtis wrote: so i dont get how this thing can be gamebreaking. yes it looks pretty smart and genius to find cute facts like this ingame but all u can do with Mineral is Marine+Hellion. only 2 gas wont help you much. i tried this couple of times to see how it works on action , and really ... really its just fun , nothing more. like 3k mineral in 1 base with 3/4 CCs and 100gas? . but indeed it could work abit at lategame , yet again , doest it add a "decent" lategame unit for Terran? nah Terran's lategame remains untouched and lousey. and btw Mules are designed as an answer to hatching X drones at time or ChronoBoosting + Warping building (not spending a worker on them for 1 min or so) . while i dont think Economy is balanced in SC atm (Z>T>P) in other hand it doesnt need balance. army balance could help more than this , and some tacts like 13/14 Hatch that Actually did a good game changing to Z ,is required for Terrans. still , nice maths i liked it ;>
Yeah but you can do a ton simply with "just" marines. A fairly small group of marines with stim can kill any building in seconds and you will have enough to spam them constantly all over the map.
One marine a second....every minute you can spam a 60 marine hit squad.
This might work on maps with Gold Expansions without Rocks, since you can easily start mining very fast in that, and reduce the time it takes to amortize the investment.
The thing is. if there is any harass... ANY and you lose 1 mule your economy is boned, often with harass multiple workers are picked off.
This is a trend I am noticeing all too often people are making up these little strats, some cheese builds, some mega efficent way of doing something, and completely disreguard either A) what others have to say about it when flaws are pointed out. or B) make up some on the spot excuse which renders their original strat void.
at the end of the day many mules are a great addition to workers, tons of workers...
Flash has joined SC2. Turtle Tarran: build orbital commands to wall and when it's safe just lift it to an expansion. Siege expand everywhere with infinite hellions and marines due to mules.
On December 02 2010 23:19 OriginalBeast wrote: The thing is. if there is any harass... ANY and you lose 1 mule your economy is boned, often with harass multiple workers are picked off.
This is a trend I am noticeing all too often people are making up these little strats, some cheese builds, some mega efficent way of doing something, and completely disreguard either A) what others have to say about it when flaws are pointed out. or B) make up some on the spot excuse which renders their original strat void.
at the end of the day many mules are a great addition to workers, tons of workers...
How often are terrans getting harassed outside of air harass? Seems almost non-existence due to their ability to wall with strong defense.
He blatantly said he was theory-crafting and this is a great post to explore the potential of the mule, there is no reason to flame.
I mentioned this last week in another thread here.
The early game implications aren't too fantastic due to the build time of CCs and the limited mineral resources, but as you transition to late game, building 5 OCs instead of 7 depots, you are getting 1 less supply and saving yourself 20 supply worth of SCVs.
All the OP of the MULE needs to be applied in late game to make 200/200 terran armies even more retarded.
The thing people arguing against it are missing though is, the MULE dying is fine. In another 80 seconds you'll have another MULE and it cost you 0 minerals to build the new one.
The big problem is losing OCs. Every time you lose an OC it is a massive hit to your economy, and in late-game, that can happen pretty quickly.
This thread is ridiculous. Ridiculously crazy, I like it.
But at the same time, it's going to be a lot harder to not get supply capped when building CCs, since it takes so much longer. I feel like if this is going to work, you are probably going to need to build a few depots first, and then slowly supply drop them while you build up your orbital army.
This is PURE theorycraft, how long is your average game, you break even after 3 mules I think is the consensus so thats how many minutes? Over 5. Can u really afford to be making such huge investments at ANY point in the game that take so long to pay for themselves. The only possible time this would be useful is when you have like 3000 minerals banked and then thats just a failure in macro. The idea that you use these for supply is also clearly ridiculous, could never keep up.
Ok, let's play a 1v1. You can spend the game building command centers and I will build actual units.
I think the idea (mining out late game expos with only mules instead of scvs) is definitely a smart move but...building mass cc's is a gimmick tactic that might work 1 time out of every 20 games, if that
On December 02 2010 23:19 OriginalBeast wrote: The thing is. if there is any harass... ANY and you lose 1 mule your economy is boned, often with harass multiple workers are picked off.
This is a trend I am noticeing all too often people are making up these little strats, some cheese builds, some mega efficent way of doing something, and completely disreguard either A) what others have to say about it when flaws are pointed out. or B) make up some on the spot excuse which renders their original strat void.
at the end of the day many mules are a great addition to workers, tons of workers...
How often are terrans getting harassed outside of air harass? Seems almost non-existence due to their ability to wall with strong defense.
He blatantly said he was theory-crafting and this is a great post to explore the potential of the mule, there is no reason to flame.
Did I say that they would get harassed? I beleive I made a statement that said IF there is any harass...
Secondly you need to get dropped more often, I play protoss and I'm pretty sure that even if I did have a wall-in dropships can drop units reguardless of having wallins
On December 02 2010 23:26 Jermstuddog wrote: The thing people arguing against it are missing though is, the MULE dying is fine. In another 80 seconds you'll have another MULE and it cost you 0 minerals to build the new one. .
In a MULE based strategy.... MULEs dieing is fine...
80 seconds is a shit ton of time, it wont always be 80 seconds, not always will just 1 MULE die...
On December 02 2010 23:19 OriginalBeast wrote: The thing is. if there is any harass... ANY and you lose 1 mule your economy is boned, often with harass multiple workers are picked off.
This is a trend I am noticeing all too often people are making up these little strats, some cheese builds, some mega efficent way of doing something, and completely disreguard either A) what others have to say about it when flaws are pointed out. or B) make up some on the spot excuse which renders their original strat void.
at the end of the day many mules are a great addition to workers, tons of workers...
How often are terrans getting harassed outside of air harass? Seems almost non-existence due to their ability to wall with strong defense.
He blatantly said he was theory-crafting and this is a great post to explore the potential of the mule, there is no reason to flame.
Did I say that they would get harassed? I beleive I made a statement that said IF there is any harass...
Secondly you need to get dropped more often, I play protoss and I'm pretty sure that even if I did have a wall-in dropships can drop units reguardless of having wallins
I don't even play terran dude. Drops can be shut down with marines/turrets and spamming orbitals would allow for you to have plenty of those.
Once again I think this would be best tried with more normal play, turtling with siege tanks, and then massing orbitals and raxes when you feel safe. On most maps it is easy for terran to get enough siege tanks off one base to make his base nearly unbreakable by ground until tier 3, then start building a few orbitals and massing an absurd amount of marines. Use marines for endless pressure while keeping your precious gas units at home to turtle.
Kind of like Jinro's macro game in RO32, he always had a main army and a separate marine hit squad constantly punishing expansions. Getting a few extra orbitals would allow those marine groups to be larger and more effective.
So, far into the game terran might aswell sacrifice 3/4 of their workers and keep a small amount because they can completely rely on mules. And keep some scv's for gas. Sounds a bit unfair if you ask me. Terran can just sacrifice alot of workers to free up supply for their army, and still maintain a very good income. (maybe not 3/4 that's total guesswork, but atleast a big amount).
Gotta love these 100% theorycraft 0% reality threads that proves mules are completely overpowered in a perfect world where the opponent never attacks. Seriously OP, what league are you in? The funniest thing is probably the people taking this thread seriously and shouting "I knew mules were OP!"
A command center takes 400 minerals and 90 seconds to build and it takes another 150 minerals and 35 seconds to morph an OC. How are you going to get the minerals to make units? You know, as not to die immediately. And if you're building units, how are you going to keep up with supply building 400 mineral 90 second supply depots?
I'm looking forward to your replays :DDDDDDDDDD
PS. I see OP is a platinum Protoss, I hope you play some TvP at your level and rage at how every Toss rolls you with 4-gate while you're building CC's and theorycraft
This is a fantastic concept, if you want to demote yourself on the ladder.
I'd like to see a replay of this working against someone with more than 20 synaptic connections. Seriously. You want to build command centers? I'll build ten lings, kill -all- of your small army, kill your mules as they land, force your CC's to lift, follow them around no matter where they go, put lings in every expansion to force you to land far away from the mineral line, kill those CC's when they get scouted by those lings, etc, etc. This could work against low league players, or people who turtle all day long, or those with severe brain damage.
What are you going to defend with? Marines? Built with the minerals you got from high fives and unicorns? You're dumping them on CC's.
One marine a second....every minute you can spam a 60 marine hit squad
This pretty much sums up the entire thread. You're all being deluded by math. Terran can't pump 60 marines in a minute, unless he has a stupid amount of rax/reactors. If you're spamming rax/marines, you're not spamming OC's to get mules. You will die in the first ten minutes, using this build, against anyone besides The Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz.
Basically one of those theory craft ideas as you put it that emphasizes a zerg playstyle of aggressively investing in economy with minimal units out as possible. Doesn't quite mesh too well in my opinion because of the nature of having separate production buildings but I'm willing to give it a few tries to utilize a super turtle style build with it.
As people have mentioned, it won't work in mirror situations and even in most TvZ or TvP unless you are considering mass OCs as a mid-game/late idea while playing standard open but that is still a huge timing window you opened up for yourself.
Cute idea, but I'll hold back on stating that it's game changing until there's some actual replays (though TL asked for replays in general for posts of this nature).
lol, how long does it take a command center to build vs a supply depot? I don't know about you, but producing out of 3 production facilities early game constantly, and having 1200 minerals lying around to have 3 command centers building at the same time, to not get supply blocked by tanks, marauders, and vikings, seems kind of ridiculous.
It is interesting, where in the mid-game you could use extra orbital commands to maximize mining potential, but early game, you need supply depots. You can't stay above the supply cap with only command centers.
I feel that the objective of this is not exactly to break the game with some superb early build as everyone's talking about with why it won't work. Yes, you can get rushed early because you're not building a supply depot. To use this exactly as was stated in the OP is basically.. stupid. stupid as hell. But if you can get past early game with a standard build and then go back to some good ol brood war style and play like everyone's favorite cartoon Franklin the turtle, I feel like this could be viable, especially since everyone knows bunkers don't cost money. If one can put this to use in the MIDGAME while turtling vigorously, this could be very cool and probably really stupid. The biggest problem would be then keeping up production with this insane income. As someone else said, 60 marines every minute is not exactly viable. But with this, especially against zerg, you can prepare a huge midgame push to end the game, because everyone knows terran hates late game vs zerg. And yeah, I'm a zerg player, so don't take all of this as great knowledge. Just adding potential theory for others to test out.
14 CC opening is possible vs zerg and save if you use the CC to wall in Getting 2 Barracks afterwards saves you from bane or roach rushes. I will try if its possible put down just one Barracks and secure to 9minutes with building mass CC.
More solid would be to use it as a long term strategy to build up your army, expand and go every 5 depots for a new CC. After getting to 2 base and 4 CC you can stop SCV production and free to spend all your money on army and CCs.
I would say that its too much of a disadvantage in the short term to be worthwhile most of the time. I can see making extra OCs being useful when you are already ahead and want to go into the late game with a stronger lead. By far the most useful and indispensable part of mining purely with mules is that your 200/200 army will be 30 food stronger since you don't have food locked up in SCVs.
You can't replace supply depots mainly because you're cutting your macro short and run the risk of just simply being out muscled. With all this extra income you need to spend it. Sure you can have 3000 minerals 9 minutes into the game, but whats the use if you can properly spend all the money into something useful depending on your matchup.
How long do you expect to get supply blocked by having that many CC/OC that early in the game? Assuming you're pumping units out of your barracks as well. Not to even mention the huge lack of army afterwards. Sure it sounds great theorycrafting but you're not factoring other variables into the problem such as build time for each and timing pushes where you'll get steamrolled.
It seems that it is always better to expand aggressively using your orbital commands than it is to leave them in your main and use them for mules. You already have the infrastructure. SCV's will always be the bulk of your income, although if you manage to take the entire map, OC's give you the ability to mine one of those expansions out very rapidly, and move to a different base and proceed to mine that one out with mules. The best way to utilize such a base is to use a command center, no upgrade, with the Neosteel Frame upgrade, and use exactly 10 scvs and focus all your mules on that base. If it gets hairy, load up the scv's, lift off, and leave the mules to die.
There is little to no reason to build an in-base orbital command, unless you intend to expand with it pretty soon. This sort of orbital command ownage comes into play once you have map-owned someone. Trying to force the issue and making in-base OC's is weak. You will get rolled by someone who makes troops with all that money you sunk into command centers. You cannot depend on mules for all your income. However, if you naturally expand and end up with a ton of orbital commands, having the entire map as a terran is much more powerful than it is with other races in terms of your income. Zerg's endgame is stronger due to increased production power with more hatcheries, and protoss' is stronger just because their units are suited for efficient end game masses.
As much as I like to encourage creative thinking this is just not feasible. I could uderstand 1 or at most 2 extra command centers while you are in 1-2 bases, but as it has been said Command Centers take longer than supply depots, the initial investment is much higher to the point that it will cut down your crucial early game army.
Really this should die to someone who scouts even a little. This is lie a P making an in base Nexus, yeah you may get double probe production and yeah, you can chronobost more stuff but its such a huge investment that it leaves you too vulnerable.
Of course, if this goes unscouted and/or unanswered this will pay off, but its the same as early double expanding,a huge risk that may pay off against a passive opponent.
Mules are incredible. So incredible that I think they may legitimately break the game if used to their fullest potential.
When Huk was on the Day9 Daily a week or two ago, he was talking about Mule issues too. Apparently some non-terran pro players are beginning to have problems in the late game because terran can continue to call down Mules instead of building supply consuming SCVs; allowing terran to devote much more supply to their army.
If what you have suggested would be possible, even only to a small degree, it could give terran a HUGE advantage in supply-maxed battles. Even if you could cut SCVs in half, that's possibly an extra 30 supply to your army in the late game. I'm interested to see how this turns out.
I really hope blizzard changes Mules to consume supply though, the current system as you correctly pointed out is broken.
First, the most important bit I've gathered so far: 14CC is not efficient for mass CC build. In fact, with ideal timing, I don't think you should even start your 2nd cc until your first OC starts at 16 supply. Then, instead of going double rax or gas, get your 2nd (and possibly 3rd and 4th).
in team games, this is really good and a lot of fun.
Might sit down and try to iron out some kind of build order in a bit.
For just massing pure marines, the only issue I've really been having is whether to build a rax or OC at time X.
Should be some simple math though.
In the games I've been playing, I do something like: standard opener, but instead of gas, I save for 2nd CC. I rush 4 CC's while maintaining constant marine production from 1 barracks, cut scv production at 16 completely, then just build CC's and Barracks throughout the game.
I move OC's to gold's or islands or whenever and I just pump marines. And my army of 184 max upped marines is pretty good 20 minutes in the game.
-On a funny note, in one game I had a gold island completely mined out at the 14 minute mark, when I saw a terran opponent trying to expand there. He must have been like "wtf".
In sum, I think this can be completely viable in 1's, but at the least it's sure a lot of fun in big games.
Some of you people need to....ummmmmm, wake up? All you people bashing it are bashing it off of a pure no supply depot, no SCV build conception. If you mix it in gently with a more normal turtlish T build, I think it will do just fine. Obviously this is all still theory-crafting, but I think the concept has massive potential. Just do a more or less standard build, work in another CC or two into a normal build, turtle a bit more than usual, then when you get your massive mineral pile going start massing CCs, rax, marines, hellion, whatever eats through your minerals. Just because you have a crap ton of minerals doesn't mean you won't have any scvs mining gas or w/e. You'll just have a mega-ton of minerals. Build about 10 reactored rax mid-game, and start suiciding groups of 30 marines at his base every minute or so while your more normal army gets up to strength. Sure it might not ever be a completely viable standard build, but if you play someone that you've played before in ladder and know he doesn't push early, or goes tech heavy, try it out. Marines are so ridiculously useful that your basically never going to be just "suiciding" them unless you're intentionally doing so.
Imagine having a typical TvX late macro game, only instead of 60 SCVs, and a 140 supply army, you have 18 SCVs on gas, 4-8 constantly building random buildings and random groups of 30 hellions/marines to do whatever the fark you want with while you still have your normal supply army out battling. And you don't care what happens to that 30 supply group, because you have more minerals than you can possibly use.
Now imagine a 2 v 2 ZT vs XX, where your teamate, the T, leaves, you go mass CC with his units while still building normal Z army. Also build an inbase hatch or three in every normal expo and extra queens so you can send a constant stream of zerglings off 9 hatcheries to your opponents base, lol. Imagine 300 strong army of zerglings popping out of your base every 30 seconds, lol.
/theory crafting
All-in-all, I don't see this being the end of supply depots or anything else drastic, but I definitely do see T late games transforming into mass CC/planetary to eat up minerals and free up supply.
I feel that the objective of this is not exactly to break the game with some superb early build as everyone's talking about with why it won't work. Yes, you can get rushed early because you're not building a supply depot. To use this exactly as was stated in the OP is basically.. stupid. stupid as hell. But if you can get past early game with a standard build and then go back to some good ol brood war style and play like everyone's favorite cartoon Franklin the turtle, I feel like this could be viable, especially since everyone knows bunkers don't cost money. If one can put this to use in the MIDGAME while turtling vigorously, this could be very cool and probably really stupid. The biggest problem would be then keeping up production with this insane income. As someone else said, 60 marines every minute is not exactly viable. But with this, especially against zerg, you can prepare a huge midgame push to end the game, because everyone knows terran hates late game vs zerg. And yeah, I'm a zerg player, so don't take all of this as great knowledge. Just adding potential theory for others to test out.
I suppose this wouldn't exactly the opener to the build, but in any event, you are still going to have to halt army production to start pumping out 550 mineral/125 second OC's. I don't know about you, but it's not like terrans can just faceroll through the midgame with ten marines, or something. They have to build units, multiple production facilities, etc. to stay alive in the first place. It's not like all the terran players in the world are sitting on 600 minerals in the mid game all the time. The benefits will take a while to come in, as well. There are simply going to be times that you can be crushed, by an opponent with half a brain, because you simply won't have the production facilities to supplement a large force to counter a push that's coming to your base.
I also enjoy how nobody has mentioned how hard this would be to actually build in one base/natural. Command centers aren't the same size as a supply depot, and terran armies are pretty immobile, so it's not like you can just put these CC's down at random expansions, the opposing player will just punish you for it.
Mules are incredible. So incredible that I think they may legitimately break the game if used to their fullest potential.
When Huk was on the Day9 Daily a week or two ago, he was talking about Mule issues too. Apparently some non-terran pro players are beginning to have problems in the late game because terran can continue to call down Mules instead of building supply consuming SCVs; allowing terran to devote much more supply to their army.
If what you have suggested would be possible, even only to a small degree, it could give terran a HUGE advantage in supply-maxed battles. Even if you could cut SCVs in half, that's possibly an extra 30 supply to your army in the late game. I'm interested to see how this turns out.
I really hope blizzard changes Mules to consume supply though, the current system as you correctly pointed out is broken.
Can't see how this breaks anything since Zerg larva inject overload and the fact that a maxed out Protoss army beats a "normal" maxed out Terran army with mass colossi and psi storm. Not to mention Terran is the slowest at replenishing and reinforcing their armies.
Already there are complaints of lategame woes against Zerg from Terran so MULE abuse seems to be a recent solution. Honestly changing the MULE would be tough as it changes the entirety of playing from early to late game. Just like adjusting chronoboosts or larva inject.
I tried it on the ladder with 2 games. I'm not exactly a high level player, but:
TvT I lost, I forgot about 10 marines at the main entrance on Shakuras while he knocked the backdoor down. And I positioned poorly.
TvZ I won on Blistering Sands. He scouted me, saw I was turtling hard on just marines, so he went for a baneling bust. The bust did minor damage and I rolled the rest of his army. Game lasted for 11 minutes, at which point I was basically mined out from my main and was setting up to take the natural along with the push.
Going for no SCVs and no supply depots obviously doesn't work. But, you may get away with a 2Rax no gas build and THEN start following it up with more barracks and CCs, while producing marines. You want all your resources to go on minerals until you have saturation, then get gas. You do have to produce some depots to keep constant SCV+marine production up, it's not possible otherwise. If you don't overdo it, this build might be possible if your opponent does not go for an early allin type build, like 4Gate or 3Rax.
On December 03 2010 01:41 Sm3agol wrote: Some of you people need to....ummmmmm, wake up? All you people bashing it are bashing it off of a pure no supply depot, no SCV build conception. If you mix it in gently with a more normal turtlish T build, I think it will do just fine. Obviously this is all still theory-crafting, but I think the concept has massive potential. Just do a more or less standard build, work in another CC or two into a normal build, turtle a bit more than usual, then when you get your massive mineral pile going start massing CCs, rax, marines, hellion, whatever eats through your minerals. Just because you have a crap ton of minerals doesn't mean you won't have any scvs mining gas or w/e. You'll just have a mega-ton of minerals. Build about 10 reactored rax mid-game, and start suiciding groups of 30 marines at his base every minute or so while your more normal army gets up to strength. Sure it might not ever be a completely viable standard build, but if you play someone that you've played before in ladder and know he doesn't push early, or goes tech heavy, try it out. Marines are so ridiculously useful that your basically never going to be just "suiciding" them unless you're intentionally doing so.
Imagine having a typical TvX late macro game, only instead of 60 SCVs, and a 140 supply army, you have 18 SCVs on gas, 4-8 constantly building random buildings and random groups of 30 hellions/marines to do whatever the fark you want with while you still have your normal supply army out battling. And you don't care what happens to that 30 supply group, because you have more minerals than you can possibly use.
Now imagine a 2 v 2 ZT vs XX, where your teamate, the T, leaves, you go mass CC with his units while still building normal Z army. Also build an inbase hatch or three in every normal expo and extra queens so you can send a constant stream of zerglings off 9 hatcheries to your opponents base, lol. Imagine 300 strong army of zerglings popping out of your base every 30 seconds, lol.
/theory crafting
All-in-all, I don't see this being the end of supply depots or anything else drastic, but I definitely do see T late games transforming into mass CC/planetary to eat up minerals and free up supply.
Lol, people aren't bashing it for the no supply depot, no-scv build alone, they are also bashing it because it implies Terran can just build mass Command Centers and survive. Instead of proposing how OP it would be in a late-game situation, come with some suggestions or replays showing how you get to that point without them killing you with a handful of zealots or lings.
The funny thing is that your opponent can take another base for every in-base CC you build, Zergs might even be able to take 2.
I feel that the objective of this is not exactly to break the game with some superb early build as everyone's talking about with why it won't work. Yes, you can get rushed early because you're not building a supply depot. To use this exactly as was stated in the OP is basically.. stupid. stupid as hell. But if you can get past early game with a standard build and then go back to some good ol brood war style and play like everyone's favorite cartoon Franklin the turtle, I feel like this could be viable, especially since everyone knows bunkers don't cost money. If one can put this to use in the MIDGAME while turtling vigorously, this could be very cool and probably really stupid. The biggest problem would be then keeping up production with this insane income. As someone else said, 60 marines every minute is not exactly viable. But with this, especially against zerg, you can prepare a huge midgame push to end the game, because everyone knows terran hates late game vs zerg. And yeah, I'm a zerg player, so don't take all of this as great knowledge. Just adding potential theory for others to test out.
I suppose this wouldn't exactly the opener to the build, but in any event, you are still going to have to halt army production to start pumping out 550 mineral/125 second OC's. I don't know about you, but it's not like terrans can just faceroll through the midgame with ten marines, or something. They have to build units, multiple production facilities, etc. to stay alive in the first place. It's not like all the terran players in the world are sitting on 600 minerals in the mid game all the time. The benefits will take a while to come in, as well. There are simply going to be times that you can be crushed, by an opponent with half a brain, because you simply won't have the production facilities to supplement a large force to counter a push that's coming to your base.
I also enjoy how nobody has mentioned how hard this would be to actually build in one base/natural. Command centers aren't the same size as a supply depot, and terran armies are pretty immobile, so it's not like you can just put these CC's down at random expansions, the opposing player will just punish you for it.
Another "inside the box" thinking post. You're assuming everyone, including pros keeps their minerals down to ~50 at all times. I've lost count how many times I see top ladder playing sitting with >1000 minerals in midgame, and have to throw down about 5 production buildings to cut it down so they don't look retarded. Instead of making them all rax/fac/star, throw a CC or two down too. 3 minutes later you'll be cranking out the minerals.
Heck, I saw one toss player, minigun, a #1 ranked ladder player, slip in his army production/macro, and was sitting on over 3k mineral off 3 bases, about 17 minutes into a cross position metal game. His answer was throwing down 10 farking waprgates. Obviously he's toss, but even then, what if he threw down 3 extra nexus instead? That's a mega-fark-ton of chronoboost to use on whatever. Same with zerg. When I see zerg get mineral heavy, they throw down expos at every available expo, even knowing they sure as heck can't defend them, much less saturate them. Why not throw down in-base hatches for extra larvae? Same principle for Ts, they just get an even bigger advanatage.
I said zomg this would be amazing until I remembered the time to build a CC, the time it takes to make the OC isnt huge but I think the best time to mass OC's is after you've safely tucked yourself into a turtling position then land/build a CC on a high yield and just mine it out with the OC's you've made then the returns would be ridiculous since mules are so OP. After that building a mech army wouldnt be out of the question with a mixed bio in there since you can afford to march 10-20 SCVs with auto repair on even for defensive purposes. I'm going to test this idea out against the computer on a few games then actually apply the Terran mineral obesity onto a few league games.
On December 03 2010 01:41 Sm3agol wrote: Some of you people need to....ummmmmm, wake up? All you people bashing it are bashing it off of a pure no supply depot, no SCV build conception. If you mix it in gently with a more normal turtlish T build, I think it will do just fine. Obviously this is all still theory-crafting, but I think the concept has massive potential. Just do a more or less standard build, work in another CC or two into a normal build, turtle a bit more than usual, then when you get your massive mineral pile going start massing CCs, rax, marines, hellion, whatever eats through your minerals. Just because you have a crap ton of minerals doesn't mean you won't have any scvs mining gas or w/e. You'll just have a mega-ton of minerals. Build about 10 reactored rax mid-game, and start suiciding groups of 30 marines at his base every minute or so while your more normal army gets up to strength. Sure it might not ever be a completely viable standard build, but if you play someone that you've played before in ladder and know he doesn't push early, or goes tech heavy, try it out. Marines are so ridiculously useful that your basically never going to be just "suiciding" them unless you're intentionally doing so.
Imagine having a typical TvX late macro game, only instead of 60 SCVs, and a 140 supply army, you have 18 SCVs on gas, 4-8 constantly building random buildings and random groups of 30 hellions/marines to do whatever the fark you want with while you still have your normal supply army out battling. And you don't care what happens to that 30 supply group, because you have more minerals than you can possibly use.
Now imagine a 2 v 2 ZT vs XX, where your teamate, the T, leaves, you go mass CC with his units while still building normal Z army. Also build an inbase hatch or three in every normal expo and extra queens so you can send a constant stream of zerglings off 9 hatcheries to your opponents base, lol. Imagine 300 strong army of zerglings popping out of your base every 30 seconds, lol.
/theory crafting
All-in-all, I don't see this being the end of supply depots or anything else drastic, but I definitely do see T late games transforming into mass CC/planetary to eat up minerals and free up supply.
Lol, people aren't bashing it for the no supply depot, no-scv build alone, they are also bashing it because it implies Terran can just build mass Command Centers and survive. Instead of proposing how OP it would be in a late-game situation, come with some suggestions or replays showing how you get to that point without them killing you with a handful of zealots or lings.
The funny thing is that your opponent can take another base for every in-base CC you build, Zergs might even be able to take 2.
Maybe you need to wake up?
Again, i don't think you see the potential. Sure, they can't just mass CCs and survive. Noone is saying that, I don't think. What I'm trying to say is, work some extra OCs into a normal build. Once you get to 4/5/6 OCs, and you've made it to mid-late game, then the MULE mechanic becomes ridiculous. Drop a CC at a gold with 5 scvs, morph into OC while building refineries. Drop in 10 MULEs. 10 MULEs at 380 min per 90 seconds.........2500 minerals per minute. How is that not huge? You could basically send half of more of your mining SCVs to get suicided, and get that much bigger of an army. And be better off economically. 2500 minerals a minute.......Enough for 50 marines. Off one base in one minute.
Day[9] had a daily a few weeks ago where QxC fought a protoss player using a mass reaper strategy. He was able to pin the protoss into his base for a good 10 minutes using nothing but reaper harass. Obviously not every harass will be as effective but even 7 or 8 minutes of uninterrupted play is probably enough for this strategy to take off.
It's important to note that aside from pinning the opponent in his base for a good period of time, mass reaper builds are relatively mineral light and gas heavy due to the long build time and light mineral costs of reapers. Reaper builds also reduce the need to save orbital energy for scans since you know exactly what your opponent is doing while you have troops. The resources required to build the command centers will come naturally as a result of this build.
The extra minerals are normally used to fast expand and/or start mass barracks, but if OP's theorycrafting is accurate maybe instead of tossing down an expansion and five barracks you could toss down two or three CC's and fewer extra barracks. Since you know the exact timing and nature of the protoss's push you can balance barracks, troops, and extra CC's accordingly.
There would probably still be a small window of vulnerability but if you planned well and fight off his initial timing push (if he is even able to scout what you are doing in time) your production will easily blow past his within a few minutes.
550 minerals for ~5 scv's and 11 supply plus the most delayed army production in the history of RTS games.
if you're oversaturating then you should be thinking 'expand', not 'ned more mulez'. if you're not oversaturated then:
24/7 mule is 3 extra minerals per second.
24/7 chronoboosted nexus, ergo 33% faster worker production (~33% more workers), is a cumulative 0.2 minerals per second, and therefore equals the income of the mule after 168 seconds... then continues to increase as long as your base is not oversaturated.
This sounds like this kind of build is going to work amazingly for one of the genetic testers that are floating around - you're going to need a few supply depots to defend early game pressure, but maybe you can change some of the genetic testers to give you checkpoints?
On December 03 2010 01:30 mlbrandow wrote: First, the most important bit I've gathered so far: [b]14CC is not efficient for mass CC build. In fact, with ideal timing, I don't think you should even start your 2nd cc until your first OC starts at 16 supply.
Actually if you 14 CC you can double OC and then go mass MMM + more CCs. As sooner you start with your second CC your economy allows you to build another one.
Also a lot of people asuming you dont have to build depots anymore. Actually you can just cut 2 or 3 when the next CC is done. The real goal of this build is a maxed army with just 30-40 SCVs (not figured out yet) and a lot of free supply for your army. After getting more than 8 OC you can even kill 15 workers and use the rest for gas mining only.
Another important thing to note is that zerg players already have to work this idea of balancing unit production with drone production. This CC/mule concept just takes this a step further, as the potential benefits of cutting 8 marines for an extra CC produces far greater long term benefits with much greater short term risk.
So, (using an contrived example here with imaginary numbers) if the terran player sees a protoss start a robo facility with two gateways already down and he expects a colossus timing push to arrive at his base in around 320 seconds he might quickly calculate that he can throw a CC down while still getting enough troops during that time to hold off the initial push. Taking this risk and then holding off the push, the extra mule income and faster main + nat saturation would probably put him decently far ahead for the midgame.
If this works and people started doing it on a regular basis then blizzard would do one of a few things:
1) nerf mules to high heaven either by reducing what they mine, how long they live for or energy cost or a combination of them. 2) remove mules all together 3) nerf morph time for OC 4) add a cooldown to mule use
Any of these things would ruin the game for people who play the way the game was intended. While this build seems fun, I don't think you will ever see it come to fruition.
On December 03 2010 03:20 HTX wrote:Also a lot of people asuming you dont have to build depots anymore. Actually you can just cut 2 or 3 when the next CC is done. The real goal of this build is a maxed army with just 30-40 SCVs (not figured out yet) and a lot of free supply for your army. After getting more than 8 OC you can even kill 15 workers and use the rest for gas mining only.
Exactly. I think a few too many people are hung up on a way to 'break the game' with this or turn it into some form of cheese. The implication of the main post just says that building as many Orbital Commands as you can afford to do without dying is very efficient.
Imagine a build with constant aggression and constant expanding. You'll have SOME depots, but every expansion you take increases your income and every army-trade keeps your supply low. It would be very efficient.
Very interesting theory. I can think of a few advantages to using supply depos and scvs instead of mules and command centers. The first is that having 3 scvs instead of 1 mule means 3x the repair which is an importiant ability for terrans. Second scvs can attack while mules cannot, sure in the late game 50 supply of extra army instead of scvs is better but until then having the extra attack power of scvs can help immencely. Another is more of a concern for lower level players but its much easier to wall off quickly with depos than command centers. My last concern is the extra apm required for mules. If you have eight orbital commands its an extra 12 clicks to worry about 90 seconds or so. Sure that doesn't seem like much but during the heat of late game when you're dealing with multiple drops, trying to set up more production buildings and microing your main army in the middle you could easly forget to drop the mules for a couple minutes and run out of minerals extra fast. Its an extra thing to worry about like larva injection for zerg. Besides those things I think you have a great idea and I look forward to hearing from players better than I on how viable and potentially game breaking a strat it could be.
Mules are incredible. So incredible that I think they may legitimately break the game if used to their fullest potential.
When Huk was on the Day9 Daily a week or two ago, he was talking about Mule issues too. Apparently some non-terran pro players are beginning to have problems in the late game because terran can continue to call down Mules instead of building supply consuming SCVs; allowing terran to devote much more supply to their army.
If what you have suggested would be possible, even only to a small degree, it could give terran a HUGE advantage in supply-maxed battles. Even if you could cut SCVs in half, that's possibly an extra 30 supply to your army in the late game. I'm interested to see how this turns out.
I really hope blizzard changes Mules to consume supply though, the current system as you correctly pointed out is broken.
Can't see how this breaks anything since Zerg larva inject overload and the fact that a maxed out Protoss army beats a "normal" maxed out Terran army with mass colossi and psi storm. Not to mention Terran is the slowest at replenishing and reinforcing their armies.
I respect your opinion, but when someone like Huk talks about balance issues I tend to value their opinion more. And what he said makes sense, once terran has 3 or 4 OCs and they start losing SCVs, they can be replaced with MULEs and then make 150-160 worth of non-worker units (as opposed to maybe 140 supply or less). Also I'm not sure I believe that a 100 supply protoss army will always beat a 100 supply terran army, there are way too many variables that need to be considered to make such a statement.
However I should clarify, Huk didn't say it was "broken", that was my hyperbole about the situation
On December 03 2010 02:20 itsMAHVELbaybee wrote: Already there are complaints of lategame woes against Zerg from Terran so MULE abuse seems to be a recent solution. Honestly changing the MULE would be tough as it changes the entirety of playing from early to late game. Just like adjusting chronoboosts or larva inject.
That's true, any changes made to the MULE system would have to be done in conjunction with a dozen other tiny balance changes to terran.
Actually, LaLush talked quite a bit about MULE balance a while back in This Thread. Was pre-patch 1.1 but many of his points about the MULE system are still valid.
I think this idea in concept would be pretty overpowered in a 2v2 or 3v3 game when you can feed so much minerals to your allies. Especially if you had a easy to expand Zerg who would only need to mine gas at his expos.
If they did consider nerfing this, they should add 2 supply for each mule.
that tactic is stupid. you can have 100000 OC's, but if u cant get expand they are useless. to get expand u need army, if u need army = u need supply depots to get it fast.
Its not the elimination of supply depots that I think is where the build/theory may go wrong, and I may not fully realize what is going on. But spending supply on units, instead of SCVs, and just play a standard game? I feel like If I saw someone doing this I would have to opt for what day9 likes to call just going and fucking killing him. I feel like I might catch a bit of flack from the people who really support the idea, but its almost like you see where its going if you scouted it.
Imagine, your little worker goes in after your pylon/depo/OL on 9 or whenever hummm... pretty standard, midgate scout "WTF BASES IN HIS BASE?" that would just tell me that killing of that guy needed to happen quickly
On December 03 2010 03:20 HTX wrote:Also a lot of people asuming you dont have to build depots anymore. Actually you can just cut 2 or 3 when the next CC is done. The real goal of this build is a maxed army with just 30-40 SCVs (not figured out yet) and a lot of free supply for your army. After getting more than 8 OC you can even kill 15 workers and use the rest for gas mining only.
Exactly. I think a few too many people are hung up on a way to 'break the game' with this or turn it into some form of cheese. The implication of the main post just says that building as many Orbital Commands as you can afford to do without dying is very efficient.
Imagine a build with constant aggression and constant expanding. You'll have SOME depots, but every expansion you take increases your income and every army-trade keeps your supply low. It would be very efficient.
this
without some of the key in-game pegs (depots and scvs in this case) it will not work, if you get just enough of these it will work incredibly
I've been building extra orbitals for a while, but I never sat down to do the math. I think the key to this is better base organization. No more random placement for me.
On December 03 2010 05:11 TheRunawayFound wrote: You need scvs to build barracks, factorys, etc etc.
Don't take it at face value, the build is about balancing your scv/depot count out with more orbitals. It doesn't get rid of supply depots, nor does it get rid of SCV's. The concept here is raising a 200/200 army that will be worth more than another player's 200/200 army.
I don't think it'll work too well, for reasons I've already stated (lack of room on the map, serious mineral consumption that will put a dent in the rate of growth for your army, etc.), but you never know.
If this DOES work, however, I'm not sure how blizzard will deal with this, since they can't really make the mule take supply, and putting a cooldown on the sucker wouldn't really alleviate this (Unless it was such a long CD that you end up generating more energy than you use putting down the mules whenever the CD ends).
base space will severly hurt this style. How are you going to stop muta harass when you have 5 OC's that you have to walk around. Not to mention this would tkae forever to really get setup with a ton of OC's.
Now through this I have generated the happy medium.
Could a 2 base with 3 OC be beneficial to a T??
Or what about a 15 CC that stays in your base instead of expanding and then you have two OC's early to spring out a 1 base timing attack?
I'm working right now - so I can't put together a big post.
I just wanted to point out a couple minor points - yes - I am a plat toss player. That's why I posted this here first - because I don't play terran and I'm not a top tier player - so I need your help to figure out how to maximally abuse this.
The key here is to understand that the OC is fundamentally different from any other structure in SC. Because of oversaturation the OC ITSELF as a building essentially produces 180m/minute as well as supply. Every other race relies on workers to generate income, OC/MULE because of OVERSATURATION is really exceptional - in that really the OC itself provides GUARANTEED income regardless of saturation - and without investment in workers.
I also wholeheartedly agree with the people saying that this can be used mostly as a general improvement to standard play going into mid game. At the very least.
I also think this can be viable when abused more extremely. But I need to figure out builds and test them in games.
META NOTE: To this point, terran is the most aggressive race. It's funny because their defensive capabilities are unmatched and with mules they should be theoretically able surpass zerg macro. Really abusing this stuff would require a very different playstyle for terran, but I think it can produce a very abusive terran game. Anyway, I'm really glad this has generated 8 pages of responses in 12 hours. If nobody else can put together some build options / replays I will do so tonight or tomorrow when I have time.
EDIT: I'm absolutely sure that blizzard will nerf mules (maybe because of this thread). In the mean time, the goal here is to figure out how to abuse the shit out of them before that happens.
EDIT 2: bottom line - a two basing terran who is farming OCs can do something that no other race can do - and that this fact hasn't been properly abused yet is sort of shocking.
Don't really know what to say... but I think this is a really bad idea. I don't really know how you came up with it or if you tested it, but I don't see any way of making this work. Just seems too wastefull, all of those cc's would probably make you really weak against ANY early pressure situation.
this has amazing potential imo. at least the concept of it is very sound.
Sure it needs tweaking but sooner or later someone will figure out a good timing to start massing cc to be able to get rid of scv and having pure 200/200 army as well as having multiple mules and scans and supply drops.
Lifted OCs DO gain energy though, so just make the CCs into OCs, drop the mules and then lift them, then land them when you have enough energy for mules (assuming you have the APM to do so, but it would free up base space)
This theorycraft ignores the fact that RTSes have inflation. Spending 550 on an OC early in the game only to have it eventually pay off due to MULE spam is not efficient. If it costs you 550 and you make back 550 in 3 minutes, you haven't made it back. 550 is more valuable at 7:00 than at 10:00. You're also sacrificing map control by doing this (as someone who did not do this would have a bigger army). There's a whole host of reasons in RTS games that you do not want to invest large amounts of money into things upfront if it is not necessary.
Don't forget the increased building time for a CC as opposed to 1-2 supply depots. Now with worker mining time loss you're looking at ~600 resources per OC. That's going to take a long time to play off when you include the natural devaluation of resources as time goes on.
Some nice maps to use this idea would be Temple, Station (islands) and Sharkuras (blocked expo) So you can get more patches to mule on. Ok this idea is extreme but maybe something similar to macro hatches could be discovered - like macro orbitals.
I just can't picture this working early on due to powerful timing pushes completely destroying someone who is sitting in their base waiting for their 550 mineral (9 marine (subtracted 2 for the supply depot alternative)) orbital command to finish.
There might be a potential for command centers to be put up in the mid or late game which I have thought about before simply because being maxed would mean a lot more, but early game seems WAY too risky.
I didn´t read past page 5 or so, but I don´t think it was pointed out yet:
What kind of army can you raise with mass minerals/4 gas? I mean, it sure is great having oodles of money, but when you do have the oodles, you should build mass depots anyway(you cant physically build 18 CCs for 200 supply). After that what will you build as army? Marines and Hellions are obvious, Marauders of course too, but what else?
At some point your gas will drop to zero while you still have oodles of minerals. Tanks, Banshees, Medivacs and especially Thor and BC are limited strongly by gas. That kinda leaves Viking as far as you have gas with Marines/Hellions and maybe Marauders.
Marines are easily counterable by Bling/FG or Storm/Colossi(vikings sure help, but still) or Tanks and Hellions. You can´t build a strat on "I have lots of money so I win" since Marines can be killed very costeffective. This is too vague of a concept to be realistically useful.
I think its funny how many people didn't even watch the replays to even really see anything about the build and how many units he had and that his base isnt unprotected. It starts out with the same build as every Terran is doing and the CC's are built during harassment, and Marines are being produced out of multiple rax's.
On December 03 2010 06:07 freetgy wrote: i don't know if this has any relevance on the calculation, but only 1 Mule can mine on each mineral patch (same like Workes block other workers)
idk. how this limits the mining rate overall on 1 or 2 bases.
wrong. mules have worker ai meaning that they will go to unused mineral patches but more than 1 mule can mine from the same patch.
We all know the power of Macro in a game. If you can out produce your enemy then you need not worry about micro, an even exchange will simply put them behind.
Also, If you continue to get your upgrades you will need less units for the exchanges, leaving some left over for your next army.
There was a style of play that zergs, July specifically, used during BW called Sauron Zerg. The basic idea was to just macro and rally your production buildings to your enemy base and this "hoard" would wear down the enemy and constantly keep them on the defensive while you macro macro macro.
Constant aggression and an Orbital Command every 5 minutes or so. Imo Drewbie throws the game away by refusing to make anything except Marauders, but his economy and production becomes pretty insane pretty quickly.
Before the supply depot before barracks change, you could get to 34 food with nearly constant production with a single supply depot with a 9 rax. You just had to use supply calldown with your second 50 energy. Would have worked beautifully with this
Hey I just want to say that I have been running some numbers through build optimizers, and some of the results are kind of scary, however, one of the best builds that I have come up with (not tested yet) relies on 1 supply depot and a supply calldown. This may seem counter productive, but since you need at least 12 scvs to make this viable (most calcs will come up with around 13 for 4 OCs) you can maintain the low econ for the ~30 second it takes for the 3 extra CCs to finish and the OCs to start. Those OCs finish around 7:30 minutes given 10 marines with stim for defense.
I don't play Terran, but I can run some more calculations if Terran players want to let me know how many marines are viable to defend with. This type of build could really change maps like LT where you can easily wall of your natural with 2 CCs or 1 CC and a bunker. Imagine a late game where the Terran has 10 OCs and is just mining out bases before the opponent can expand there. O_O
However, I am not sure if I am going to share these builds with the public until I test them with properly skilled Terran friends. Please do PM me with info, so that I can get some builds to really show off this style of play.
Really interesting idea, but what are the CC vs supply build times per supply offered? That is the primary pitfall I could see for this build; you may not be able to keep up w/ the production such an economy could sustain
Wait till the next sc2 chronicle, when all Terran buildings including the CC can be raised or lowered. Never have to worry about space again. Just stack the CC's!
So pretty much what your trying to say is that if we attack withen the 1st 5 - 7 minutes we win against this build?.. ty for posting this build order i hope loads of ppl try it out
That is some excellent theorycrafting if I do say so myself. I'm more than happy to test some builds for you on the weekend.
As for build times, Supply depots are 30 seconds, and Command Centres are 100 seconds.
what that means is that early game, while building your ridiculous 'broken' economy, throwing down command centres as food isn't exactly a bad thing, because the money you would usually spend in order to supply cap yourself is being spent on the self sustaining CC.
For anyone whos interested, some quick reference guides.
So, considering we are all still theorycrafting, If you were to wall off with a Command Centre, you basically have 4x the amount of time before they push into your base as you would walling off with depots, so for those of you who say that this can't work, and that CC's that early cripple you...
Personally I've always wondered why terrans in general don't aggressively expand. They can usually defend with a surprisingly small amount of units, plus they have Planetary Fortresses. Yet, Terran always likes to do 1basing stuff??
I want to see terrans doing insanely aggressive expanding like a zerg player. I think it would just be impossible to deal with. MorroW was doing it while he was a terran player. Now he's zerg, and aggressively expanding isn't anything special.
With a few test runs in yabot I noticed that your going to have these huge HP buildings to create very strong wall offs to protect from busts and counterattacks, and you can also float OCs around to scout , just land them when they get energy. You can basically go from expo to expo with all your OC, land them to simcity some defense, pillage all the minerals for a while, then lift off and take another expo. You can do that on maps where you have to expand towards your enemy because your army is going to be in that direction anyway to help defend.
Imagine on a map like metal, you can float extra OC to wall off the ramps on the 3rd base, or the gold, or even wall off an entire lane, and since you don't need to use those to build extra scv, your not wasting anything when floating them. They turn into really big, high HP supply depot walls that lift instead of sinking.
After you have tons of OC, you can get away with very few SCVs, making a max 200/200 army less worker heavy, using only mules for minerals and using only scvs on gas and to build.
MULEs could gather 10-15 minerals per run and STILL BE GOOD. Scanner sweep could only provide vision in the graphical area, and radar detection in the extended area, and STILL BE GOOD.
Call down: supplies sucks because the other two abilities are better by over 100%.
This is crazy, Turtle Terran x10. Set up some Ebay charged defenses, setup the CC Farms, and roflstomp the other races with a max army (or all-in I suppose but I think this is more useful late game) with 20-35% more fighting units.
I love being Terran so much. Since the dawn of SC1 we have roflstomped many an alien.
Anyone else think idra is playing the wrong race? I think its time to see the 18,22,26 orbital build and then he can complain when his opponent has a huge army harassing his orbitals instead of just playing a macro game.
So according to this you should have just started your 7th rax at 6:11, with your fourth OC about to complete.
I think this is a good general benchmark to begin working forward on refining. Obviously this completely neglects defense to 6 minutes but again - as a foundation I think this is a good place to start.
On December 02 2010 19:35 ledarsi wrote: Cryosin you are full of it. There is no way you can get a 200/200 army in 14 minutes with this build. It's beyond impossible.
I mean seriously, when did your orbital commands finish? Post the replay please.
200 supply +1/+1 CS/S army in 13:37 with 3k income: + Show Spoiler +
I know that people are thinking about a 200/200 build --- this is really the wrong thing to look for. What you want to do is be endlessly sending a stream of ~100 food armies every minute or so from earlier.
On December 03 2010 10:17 30to1 wrote:I think this is a good general benchmark to begin working forward on refining. Obviously this completely neglects defense to 6 minutes but again - as a foundation I think this is a good place to start.
I think it's cool that you guys are figuring out the optimal way to do this, but please keep in mind that the way you are approaching this is as a cheese strat, which will make most people say "Oh, that's cute." and then move on.
Hell, I have a 4-Gate build that hits at ~5:45. If you want to be taken seriously, please consider an approach that doesn't leave you defenseless against early pressure.
I agree with what you're saying. But I think the way to go with this is to start by pushing the economy as absolutely far as it will go, then begin to scale back until its survivable.
Please keep in mind that build is just a starting point!
Going with the replays Griffith posted, this will never survive against an early protoss push. At 7 minute mark there are blink stalkers or a 4-gate walking in your front door destroying your marines. Or wait, maybe earler. I think I can get warp gates at 5:45 game time. Versus a zerg? Maybe.
Oh well, if any strategy becomes unbeatable Blizz will simply nerf it. You make an abusive MULE strategy and you will only get your MULEs nerfed.
Just wow. I can't believe this is viable. Have to try this sometime lol.
On a serious note, i'm curious as to how fast this mines out your expo and main. It's fine to have a 200/200 army earlier than them, but if you are almost mined out you can't follow through. I'd want to know how fast you can remax afterwards to continue to throw stuff at them. (Both assuming fresh bases and without fresh bases). If you can get a second or even third wave going off your 2 bases, this could be incredible.
On December 03 2010 10:36 30to1 wrote:I agree with what you're saying. But I think the way to go with this is to start by pushing the economy as absolutely far as it will go, then begin to scale back until its survivable.
Alright, cool. As long as you're aware of it and you have a plan. Keep it up. ^^
Despite all the "OMG THIS BUILD SUCKS CAUSE _____ IS A POSSIBLE COUNTER" talk on these boards, I think this has been a good week for sc2strat's ingenuity.
It appears to be a really strong build, provided your opponent does not see it until it is too late. Against greedy hatch first zergs, it may be very viable. Against fast expand protoss and terran, it may be somewhat viable. But the main focus should to get rid of any information that you're doing this strategy. However, that's a poor way to play, since the strategy is nullified if it is scouted, which it will be.
I disagree. The strength of the strat is that no other race can match the income rate - scouted or not.
I've been revising a number of builds, and I think that going for 3oc as a less greedy core is perhaps much more viable. 3rd OC at around 6 minutes, with a nice (small, but probably viable) MM core for defense.
Realistically the 3OC core will probably be the heart of these kinds of strats I think.
I didn't get to read all the posts here so I don't know if it's been said already, but some of the information mentioned in the OP seems a bit off.
For starters, I thought 1 mule mines at the rate of like 3-4 SCVs, not 5-6, but I might have been mistaken (considering how good they seem to be I wouldn't be surprised if it was in fact higher) update: it's about 4
Secondly, you mentioned how MULEs make up for OC cost in 3:20 or something, then a CC's cost-minus-supply is made up in only 1:30. While that is the case, I don't see the reasoning of saying that, since the only thing of value is the time it takes for an OC's cost-minus-supply to be harvested with it's MULEs, because that's what a person is paying for in their investment.
Lastly, and most important: The thing about MULEs is while they are efficient, they take a long time to make. time is a critical variable in Starcraft 2. 1 OC takes 135 seconds to make, and costs 412 minerals. 4 SCVs take 68 seconds to make, and cost 200 minerals (well I guess 250 including supply). If another CC or OC was made, the time to get 4 SCVs is cut in half also, which makes them even better. Overall if one was to build OCs, they'd be investing twice as much time (can be more or less depending on other factors) and twice as much minerals to get the same income as SCVs (or a bit less than twice with supply factored in)
I am aware however, that those are not the only factors. One of the most important factors is that MULEs can mine over the SCVs, so once a player has 18-20 SCVs mining minerals it becomes efficient to be building orbital commands instead of SCVs, at least if they aren't expanding soon.
Overall though, I think that because OCs are a heavier investment in both time and resources, and that this game always has available expansions, that we wouldn't be seeing more than around 2 extra orbital commands per base
On December 03 2010 11:02 Xapti wrote: I didn't get to read all the posts here so I don't know if it's been said already, but some of the information mentioned in the OP seems a bit off.
For starters, I thought 1 mule mines at the rate of like 3-4 SCVs, not 5-6, but I might have been mistaken (considering how good they seem to be I wouldn't be surprised if it was in fact higher) update: it's about 4
Secondly, you mentioned how MULEs make up for OC cost in 3:20 or something, then a CC's cost-minus-supply is made up in only 1:30. While that is the case, I don't see the reasoning of saying that, since the only thing of value is the time it takes for an OC's cost-minus-supply to be harvested with it's MULEs, because that's what a person is paying for in their investment.
Lastly, and most important: The thing about MULEs is while they are efficient, they take a long time to make. time is a critical variable in Starcraft 2. 1 OC takes 135 seconds to make, and costs 412 minerals. 4 SCVs take 68 seconds to make, and cost 200 minerals. Overall if one was to build OCs, they'd be investing twice as much time and twice as much minerals to get the same income as SCVs.
I am aware however, that those are not the only factors. One of the most important factors (aside from gold fields, which make MULEs extremely good) is that MULEs can mine over the SCVs, so once a player has 18-20 SCVs mining minerals it becomes efficient to be building orbital commands instead of SCVs, at least if they aren't expanding soon.
Overall though, I think that because OCs are a heavier investment in both time and resources, and that this game always has available expansions, that we wouldn't be seeing more than around 2 extra orbital commands per base
The mining rate of an SCV depends on saturation. You're right that if each SCV has its own patch, a mule is only worth 4scvs and change, if you are comparing saturated SCVs - it ends up being closer to between 5 and 6. The simple proof being that 3 SCVs saturate a patch - and 8 patches give you ~800 m income. An OC can generate very close to 200m (you have ~5 seconds with 2 mules). Meaning that each OC is actually almost exactly equal to 6 SCVs - each mule individually is worth like ~5.7 scvs saturated or ~4.5 scvs unsaturated.
On December 03 2010 11:01 30to1 wrote: I disagree. The strength of the strat is that no other race can match the income rate - scouted or not.
I've been revising a number of builds, and I think that going for 3oc as a less greedy core is perhaps much more viable. 3rd OC at around 6 minutes, with a nice (small, but probably viable) MM core for defense.
Realistically the 3OC core will probably be the heart of these kinds of strats I think.
The strength of the strat only occurs if you survive until the point where that income rate actually matters. Meaning that if you don't make it to that point in the game, why bother playing like this.
If the entire game was simply baneling bust into mass speedling, would this build be viable? Not currently.
There is a point where you have nothing, and then it becomes you have a ridiculous amount. Before that point, you're vulnerable to everything. The entire goal of this strategy, should then be to reach that point without significant losses.
You know, this is a really interesting and new line of thinking. I think with the right tweaking this might actually be able to be used. At least partially. Mules are a bit stronger than I thought they were.
Wow... I've thought about this possibility a long time ago but since I'm zerg I've never tested it. This is going to make me sick. Think about foxer doing this with an unlimited stream of marines. FML
On December 03 2010 11:12 30to1 wrote: The mining rate of an SCV depends on saturation. You're right that if each SCV has its own patch, a mule is only worth 4scvs and change, if you are comparing saturated SCVs - it ends up being closer to between 5 and 6. The simple proof being that 3 SCVs saturate a patch - and 8 patches give you ~800 m income. An OC can generate very close to 200m (you have ~5 seconds with 2 mules). Meaning that each OC is actually almost exactly equal to 6 SCVs - each mule individually is worth like ~5.7 scvs saturated or ~4.5 scvs unsaturated.
It's possible that what you're saying can be considered right, but in my opinion it is flawed logic. The way I look at it is that MULEs aren't getting worth more SCVs when there's more saturation, the SCVs are just loosing value once they don't optimally mine. There will be periods where more than optimal numbers of SCVs accumulate, but generally this is for better mining upon expansion. I am just taking 3rd party numbers here, but assuming mule averages 170 mn/min (as opposed to 160 or 180), and that SCVs mine 42 mn/min then that makes a MULE equal to 4.04 SCVs (until 16 SCVs) not 4.5. Past 16 SCVs, at 170 average mining rate (which is best comparison because you can't stack MULEs on one field when others are nearby, and even if you could it would get mined out eventually), that is 4.8 times less than the 816 minerals per minute 24 workers would mine. 24/4.8 is 5 SCVs, so MULE would never be worth more than 5 SCVs unless one counts extra SCVs that are useless for mining. 2 miners per patch is 80% max mining rate (some people call it efficiency but that is quite mistaken), 100% cost efficiency, 3 miners per patch is 100% max mining rate, 80% efficiency. (this is not true efficiency though, since it's comparing costs with rates, and costs no matter how large that generate rates of growth are always efficient, just take longer to be beneficial)
Just throw in some offensive/defensive planetary fortresses and you will have an unstoppable unbeatable command center centric army. Hell the command center might just be the best unit in the game :/
I think switching into this off a mech build would be best. You can turtle with siege tanks, and then when you push out, take a ton of scvs, set them to auto repair and then the 2nd big battle, your army is much more powerful.
On December 03 2010 10:39 TheOracle wrote: Just wow. I can't believe this is viable. Have to try this sometime lol.
On a serious note, i'm curious as to how fast this mines out your expo and main. It's fine to have a 200/200 army earlier than them, but if you are almost mined out you can't follow through. I'd want to know how fast you can remax afterwards to continue to throw stuff at them. (Both assuming fresh bases and without fresh bases). If you can get a second or even third wave going off your 2 bases, this could be incredible.
I've been averaging between 10 minutes and never on my main. It depends how quickly you can secure a muling station.
If you can hold any expansion for 90 seconds, you can pick it clean late game.
I've mostly been playing this in 4's, but the ability to just do things like deny expansions... have an island cleaned out before the 15 minute mark of a game, etc... it's just ridiculous.
And you'd be surprised how fast a 170 stimmed 3/3 CS ball of marines can annihilate a late-game base if the enemy's army pushes out in a different direction. 170 marine deaths? No problem, use your 30 barracks to make a new clone army in about 2 minutes...
And I wouldn't even consider myself "good" at utilizing this build yet.
The people who speak of just adding this on top of regular builds when the resources inevitably stack up are the ones to really listen to. And when you attack, you don't need to expand, but you definitely should make another OC that will have paid for itself by the time the next big fight happens.
On December 03 2010 11:12 30to1 wrote: The mining rate of an SCV depends on saturation. You're right that if each SCV has its own patch, a mule is only worth 4scvs and change, if you are comparing saturated SCVs - it ends up being closer to between 5 and 6. The simple proof being that 3 SCVs saturate a patch - and 8 patches give you ~800 m income. An OC can generate very close to 200m (you have ~5 seconds with 2 mules). Meaning that each OC is actually almost exactly equal to 6 SCVs - each mule individually is worth like ~5.7 scvs saturated or ~4.5 scvs unsaturated.
It's possibly what you're saying can be considered right, but in my opinion it is flawed logic. The way I look at it is that MULEs aren't getting worth more SCVs when there's more saturation, the SCVs are just loosing value once they don't optimally mine. There will be periods where more than optimal numbers of SCVs accumulate, but generally this is for better mining upon expansion. I am just taking 3rd party numbers here, but assuming mule averages 170 mn/min (as opposed to 160 or 180), and that SCVs mine 42 mn/min then that makes a MULE equal to 4.04 SCVs (until 16 SCVs) not 4.5. Past 16 SCVs, at 170 average mining rate (which is best comparison because you can't stack MULEs on one field when others are nearby, and even if you could it would get mined out eventually), that is 4.8 times less than the 816 minerals per minute 24 workers would mine. 24/4.8 is 5 SCVs, so MULE would never be worth more than 5 SCVs unless one counts extra SCVs that are useless for mining.
If the numbers from haploids production calculator are accurate, 1 mule mines as quickly as 4 scvs for the first 16 scvs mining in a standard 8 patch. After 16 scvs, the mule mines as quickly as the next 8 scvs (assuming again a standard 8 patch).
On December 03 2010 11:12 30to1 wrote: The mining rate of an SCV depends on saturation. You're right that if each SCV has its own patch, a mule is only worth 4scvs and change, if you are comparing saturated SCVs - it ends up being closer to between 5 and 6. The simple proof being that 3 SCVs saturate a patch - and 8 patches give you ~800 m income. An OC can generate very close to 200m (you have ~5 seconds with 2 mules). Meaning that each OC is actually almost exactly equal to 6 SCVs - each mule individually is worth like ~5.7 scvs saturated or ~4.5 scvs unsaturated.
It's possibly what you're saying can be considered right, but in my opinion it is flawed logic.
what i'm saying is right.
I stand corrected though with ~4.5 unsaturated.
My tests indicate scv rates to be roughly 40/35/25 in terms of decreasing returns on scv saturation (these were not exhaustive, but I trust them more than your numbers).
At 16 workers then SCVs would generate 75m/ ms per patch or 37.5 per worker.
So according to this, you're right in that at unsaturated levels a mule isn't worth ~4.5 scvs --- its actually worth ~4.8.
I have to say, this is bloody brilliant. So far I've found Terran to be the least fun to play race, but I'm definitely going to be trying this in some team games to get the hang of it. The build in this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=173703 looks like it'd be a blast.
On December 03 2010 12:09 30to1 wrote: My tests indicate scv rates to be roughly 40/35/25 in terms of decreasing returns on scv saturation (these were not exhaustive, but I trust them more than your numbers).
At 16 workers then SCVs would generate 75m/ ms per patch or 37.5 per worker.
You're telling me you're getting reduced mining rates when going form 8 miners to 16 miners per patch? Doesn't make any sense to me, because workers do not have to wait for each other when there's only 2 so they should not be any slower. I can't say those stats aren't wrong though. Values I heard was 42 mn/min up to 16 miners on liquipedia, but it is possible that information is not accurate.
Secondly I don't know if you're just not explaining yourself, or if you misunderstood what I was saying about false logic. When I said false logic, I didn't mean your math/stats is wrong, that was a separate issue. What I was saying is that you shouldn't valuate a MULE compared to at the worst efficiency number of SCVs. In certain situations MULEs will be more valuable to a player than the standard base valuation, but that doesn't mean it should be considered that for all cases. I don't really know why I said that though, since you never truely valuated a MULE at only the higher value, just range between the lower an higher, which is acceptable.
Xapti, from my tests (again, it was only a few runs) - the second set of workers per patch harvest less unless you extensively micro them - it depends on exact build times - but occasionally they'll go from patch to patch looking for one thats free - and this costs you minerals.
On December 03 2010 11:12 30to1 wrote: The mining rate of an SCV depends on saturation. You're right that if each SCV has its own patch, a mule is only worth 4scvs and change, if you are comparing saturated SCVs - it ends up being closer to between 5 and 6. The simple proof being that 3 SCVs saturate a patch - and 8 patches give you ~800 m income. An OC can generate very close to 200m (you have ~5 seconds with 2 mules). Meaning that each OC is actually almost exactly equal to 6 SCVs - each mule individually is worth like ~5.7 scvs saturated or ~4.5 scvs unsaturated.
It's possibly what you're saying can be considered right, but in my opinion it is flawed logic.
My tests indicate scv rates to be roughly 40/35/25 in terms of decreasing returns on scv saturation (these were not exhaustive, but I trust them more than your numbers).
At 16 workers then SCVs would generate 75m/ ms per patch or 37.5 per worker.
You're telling me you're getting reduced mining rates when going form 8 miners to 16 miners per patch? Doesn't make any sense to me, because workers do not have to wait for each other when there's only 2 so they should not be any slower. I can't say those stats aren't wrong though. Values I heard was 42 mn/min up to 16 miners on liquipedia, but it is possible that information is not accurate.
Mining rates have been analyzed and overanalyzed and the numbers have been pretty clear since release. I suggest referring to one of the several other threads or the Liquipedia page on mining efficiency.
Let's return to discussing the utility of mass OCs!
On December 03 2010 12:26 30to1 wrote: Xapti, from my tests (again, it was only a few runs) - the second set of workers per patch harvest less unless you extensively micro them - it depends on exact build times - but occasionally they'll go from patch to patch looking for one thats free - and this costs you minerals.
Ah, anecdotal evidence here, but I have noticed that once in a while
I attribute it to the "uneven" placement of mineral patches. It happens more on some maps than others, and on some bases vs others.
EDIT: On the discussion of OCs...
Good lord, this thing frightens me as a protoss player. Then again, my default build is a 2-gate 5 stalker early pressure build. Lemme cross reference the times and figure out when it hits in conjunction with this build.
EDIT: According to the BO test run posted on page 10, 5 stalkers hitting at around 5 minutes would encounter 6 or so marines.
Now, if you were to cut out 2 marines and drop a bunker, that would likely hold long enough to get more marine reinforcements (assuming you bring SCVs to repair)
Can't remember where I first saw this, and someone did bring it up earlier in the thread ( I think) of the use of mules to steal minerals from your opponent.
If this build works out, it appears to be capable of accelerated starvation once you have enough minerals by just scanning and dropping loads of mules on your enemy's minerals.
I suggested this on the Battle.net forums about five months ago and was told that it wouldn't possibly work because you'd get steamrolled before you got a return on your investment.
So after watching Griffins games, I've started to scale back my tests.
The reality as Shlowpoke pointed out is that by trying to abuse 4+ OCs very early in the game, you're essentially turning this into risky cheese - and the reality is that OC Farming and mule mechanics are much more important that this.
I've started thinking that as a guideline for how to utilize this to its maximum would basically be starting out with a very FE as terran if possible, and slowly using OC Farming as a general tool throughout the game. The idea would be to generally just keep a constant economic advantage over your opponent - instead of a cheesy/high risk build.
Basically, you always keep an economic advantage by adding 1 OC for every base your opponent has - so that you always have more income than he does (while generally keeping pace with actual expansions).
Okay, from preleminary tests vs the Very Hard AI: I can say with great certainty that you'll want your first Rax to pump out Marauders rather than Marines, 5 RR and 7RR do alot of damage and can occasionally snipe a marine.
On December 03 2010 12:28 mlbrandow wrote: Mining rates have been analyzed and overanalyzed and the numbers have been pretty clear since release. I suggest referring to one of the several other threads or the Liquipedia page on mining efficiency.
Assuming you read my post, it said that I got my info from liquipedia. Liquipedia said 42 mineral per minute for 2 workers per patch on one page. and about 40 minerals per minute for 2 workers per patch on another page. On a third page it gets even more specific and says 39-45 with 1 per patch, 78-90 with 2 per patch, which also averages out to 42 per minute. If you have additional conflicting information you'd like to share, then do so instead of saying what you said, because I found your statement to be very disrespectful and ignorant.
On December 03 2010 12:09 30to1 wrote: what i'm saying is right.
My tests indicate scv rates to be roughly 40/35/25 in terms of decreasing returns on scv saturation (these were not exhaustive, but I trust them more than your numbers).
On December 03 2010 12:40 Conrose wrote: Okay, from preleminary tests vs the Very Hard AI: I can say with great certainty that you'll want your first Rax to pump out Marauders rather than Marines, 5 RR and 7RR do alot of damage and can occasionally snipe a marine.
What build are you using to test? I've just run about 15 different builds through various optimizers, I'm about to do some in game tests as well.
EDIT: would you mind posting a replay? Even if its crappy, having more games to look at always help. If its too embarrassing just PM me link
This is the strategy thread. Please do not post untested ideas here. Especially ones like this that are clearly bad. Go to the general thread for those. If you are going to come up with a strategy to pollute these boards with, at least give this community and it's members the respect of taking some of your precious time (of which you clearly have a lot) to actually test this build. At the very least, beat a computer with it before you bring it to us. We are here to discuss strategies. We are not here to discuss an idea that gestated in your head for all of 2 minutes. Please make a small effort to work on your strategy before making it a thread.
what needs to be tested out on this theory is how many units you could have out in those first ten to twelve minutes of the game to help figure out what kind of early aggression would be effective against this. but this sounds as if it may some great potential.
its not feasible to mass CC like the OP describes, but I think it definitely is a good way of using spare minerals... if u are getting high on mins, throwing down another CC>orbital command can pay off big time later on.
On December 03 2010 12:51 bobcat wrote: This is the strategy thread. Please do not post untested ideas here. Especially ones like this that are clearly bad. Go to the general thread for those. If you are going to come up with a strategy to pollute these boards with, at least give this community and it's members the respect of taking some of your precious time (of which you clearly have a lot) to actually test this build. At the very least, beat a computer with it before you bring it to us. We are here to discuss strategies. We are not here to discuss an idea that gestated in your head for all of 2 minutes. Please make a small effort to work on your strategy before making it a thread.
A little fucking ridiculous the amount of hostility in this comment. But there is a little nut of truth in there amid the insane anger.
Honestly, I have somewhat limited time, and I was hoping this post would encourage people to help contribute ideas to this. It's really potentially a pretty big deal.
I feel: 1. Some people in this thread are just being close-minded douchebags, the OP says himself it's purely theorycraft, and it's obviously not "easy" to get BOs for something like this. 2. Bother reading? So many people asking questions that are answered, or asking for existing replays, some people even saying that you should at least prove you can beat a computer, which is DONE in a diamond level play in the freaking replay. 3. Replacing supply depots early game won't be happening. I guess what could be game-changing, is considering OCs like "teching up" your economy. You shouldn't do so early on, using supply depots to "fend" off supply blocks, and when you have decent army, and you can afford "macro tech", I think it's interesting to try.
I'd so try this, but I play protoss and zerg, and I'm not really totally looking forward to learning all of terran to a point where I can validate the viabilities of this build or not. ------ Again, if you bother looking, at the 13 minute mark, you have a max supply army made up of marines and marauders, with a rapist economy, where OCs are only just adding to your benefit.
So, in other words, play Age of Empires II, but in StarCraft
I really like this, though. I play Protoss on ladder, so I can't use it there, but I will definitely try this out next time I'm doing 3v3s or 4v4s just to be a badass.
I think what this thread will eventually reveal is that it is optimal economically to have at least 2 orbitals per expansion and once you can afford the supply, build orbitals instead of depots. At WORST if you build an orbital you end up with 6 less marines during some timing push by the opponent, so if you can trade units and get your supply down a little, you will be in amazing shape. The benefits improve drastically over time. I am expecting that building a 2nd orbital per expansion will become a standard in the next few weeks.
I just ran a series of test games against the AI - I've never played terran before and was pretty pleased at how it feels. Obviously it was just against Very Hard AI - so not much of a challenge - even if I have never played T except 8 campaign missions. But terran FE into OC Farm is sort of nuts.
An interesting side effect revolves around how expansions work. As I posted in thread opener, expansions are really expensive and workers are the vast majority of the cost. Generally you don't want to lose an expansion because its worth around 1900 minerals fully saturated and thats a huge loss.
But if you have around 4-6 OC you can just drop one at an expansion and mule it. Even if it gets killed (unlikely considering lift), you lose at worst 550 minerals - which is nothing considering your income rate will generally flux between 2200-3500. It's sort of ridiculous how potent terrans mid/late game can get using this kind of technique.
EDIT: I've been using a 14 CC / 15 rax build - sort of copying the zerg FE style from the zerg econ thread. The optimizers suggest 14 cc / 16 cc / 17 rax for maxed out econ or 12 rax / 15 cc for safer play.
im not a T player but for the purpose of science i tested it. i just do standard early game, 14 CC wall off and swtich to "mule" build. most problems come from super aggressive early game pressure.
ive tried it 5x already, but because im not T i have problem with timings and proper BO. let me try it a few more time, and i'll post replay here.
30to1 December 03 2010 14:25 Now THATS the kind of post I've been waiting to see!
That's awesome gongryong, I can't wait to see the replay.
30to1, hats off to you on the idea.
TBH, my interest here is twofold: 1. the pure joy of perfecting a particular build/strategy 2. identifying weaknesses in it as a zerg player (xd)
a legit terran should be able to come up with something more stable tho. i have to read up on terran BO until i could run tests on it. i think the idea of 1depot OC mule is out of the question. there has to be some force to deal with early pressure. however, it shines best as a transition from standard 14CC or whatever defensive T build and somewhere upon saturating the first expo, switch to it. its very managemenst heavy and there is a lull mid game as you do the switch. the general idea however it to get a better max 200/200 army (maybe 180/20 army/scv) than others.
its a little difficult, but im willing to pour in time to it until i can definitively say it works or not. early results are positive. those who post purely on the negative without even trying it or at least providing a counter-theorycraft argument are just envious of 30to1 for starting this xd
Most players would kill you by 12 minutes. Any competent player would know what's up and just kill you anyways. You might be able to pay for it with a MULE, but that takes time and previous capital. That's more the problem with FE. You're putting 400 minerals into something that hurts army size drastically.
This is a cool idea, but I can't see this being effective among top players. It takes a few minutes before each one pays itself off (CC build time, OC build time, 2 mules). Once the build is scouted an attack between the time of the CC going down, and its own mules paying it off early on should be a game ender against a competent opponent. You sacrifice too many minerals early on to be able to defend. Even if it works for now, it is hard for anyone to defend against/kill something they have never seen before. I can't imagine this working in a game amongst top players unless it is the first time they have seen the build, and even then I doubt it.
A better way to do this would be to do a 1 rax FE or 14 CC, or 2 rax pressure, or whatever, and conserve your pressuring marines (as you lose units, you replace them) but you use your additional minerals on saving up for a command center instead of SCVs. This means, get to around 16 SCVs, and keep anywhere between 5-10 marines and a few SCVs on the opponent's base, pressuring him with marine/bunker/SCV and using your additional OC to call more mules down. This is very all-in though (even if you go the no-defense-for-6-minutes route) and so you need to have very good management skills to pull it off. Plus, you can't really get gas until very late in the game, so you're basically counting on being able to keep up enough pressure with your superb micro to prevent your opponent from overwhelming you with tech or superior numbers.
On December 02 2010 17:15 twalf wrote: and then you're mined out. crap. at least you can float all your 550-mineral orbitals around to confuse your opponent
Yeah I completely agree with this, people look at mules as "free money." Technically it's just mining your minerals faster. Unlike injecting larva, where it's take it or leave it "free," mules are, if you don't get it now, you'll have more later. With that amount of mules, you'll mine out instantly after a few minutes into the game, technically making your push all in since your bases are mined out.
Also it takes nearly 3 mules to pay for one OC. OC=550 m 2 x 240 = 480 Mining time for an SCV is lost in that. So for the first 3 minutes or so, you are technically suffering.
As for the comment that said he used it to win in Phantom, of course it works since the minerals are at 50,000. That is the "free mineral" situation, unlike in real melee where it's only getting minerals faster. Not to mention delayed tech doesn't really matter in money maps, and no one kills you early game unless they're a troll.
On December 02 2010 17:15 twalf wrote: and then you're mined out. crap. at least you can float all your 550-mineral orbitals around to confuse your opponent
Yeah I completely agree with this, people look at mules as "free money." Technically it's just mining your minerals faster. Unlike injecting larva, where it's take it or leave it "free," mules are, if you don't get it now, you'll have more later. With that amount of mules, you'll mine out instantly after a few minutes into the game, technically making your push all in since your bases are mined out.
Also it takes nearly 3 mules to pay for one OC. OC=550 m 2 x 240 = 480 Mining time for an SCV is lost in that. So for the first 3 minutes or so, you are technically suffering.
As for the comment that said he used it to win in Phantom, of course it works since the minerals are at 50,000. That is the "free mineral" situation, unlike in real melee where it's only getting minerals faster. Not to mention delayed tech doesn't really matter in money maps, and no one kills you early game unless they're a troll.
1) Following that logic, Zerg loses XXXX minerals for every building they make, which is true, but the point is that it isn't that big of a deal
2) You have much higher income than your opponent, yes you are getting your minerals quicker, not "free", but comparatively, your opponent is going through his minerals significantly slower, so the minerals may as well be free, because really, you are capable of creating an army that is much bigger than his in the same amount of time and thus you are always at an advantage in that regard.
this is a very interesting idea. now what if u replaced mineral mining scv's with mules instead so cutting scv's to get normal income as terran you would also be freeing up food for an army allowing a bigger army to be formed though from an apm sense u would have to be spot on with ur mule timing.
This is interesting, although I somehow doubt it will work. Dumping 400 minerals all at once will hurt you in the short run. 3 minutes to recuperate is pretty long.
OP, I think you might do well to include a brief FAQ on your post... as many posts in the last few pages are just reiterating previously disproved or addressed points.
I literally have replays of me doing this on ladder during beta back when Platinum was the highest you could go as far as ladder ranking. I did this as a joke and the guy conceded at the end of the game "gg, never seen anyone play this style"
I'll see if I can explain to my mom how to turn on my computer so she can put some of the ones from post-beta onto replayfu.
Great thread. Would love to see replays (successful or otherwise) as this develops.
Interestingly, qxc used this strat style in the late game against mini(P), with numerous OC's and PF's on Lost Temple. I think he had OC's in the teens. He even spammed mules on mini's mineral patches to pick off some of his (potential) income.
Long game, but definitely worth the watch even for the entertainment value alone (loads of double drops, nukes, mothership, mass carriers, etc.).
I like the idea behind it, but you'll still need some supply depots to keep up with the army production in the early-mid game. But I can see this type of play really working lategame.
I love it. This is like sc2 mad science. I'm in the camp of the skeptical because it calls for a lot of variables that the opponent needs to satisfy, but hey more power to you!
I always wondered why someone hasn't thought of something like this yet for the mid or late game. Early on I doubt it's worth it since you'll be so vulnerable as well as the fact your main will get cluttered quickly.
I actually had someone pull this on me the other day. He was sitting on three bases in Delta Quadrant and had 2 additional in-base orbital commands, 5 in total. His third was a gold and it had no SCV's mining. Instead he used all his mules on the gold. The production output he was capable was outstanding and I had difficulties keeping him at bay even though he was producing exclusively marines and I had 5 bases producing exclusively speed banelings with some zerglings to boot.
I've never seen so many marines die at once though.
I really like this idea, might try it next time I go Terran. I never really took note before that MULEs don't cost food (sounds silly right?). But that extra saved 20 food could be an extra drop, more tanks, more vikings, etc. I'd like to see how this could work in teamplay though, I can see a PT combo with the Terran muling working extremely well.
It seems the orbital command is best used to grab additional bases rather than be built in-base. Having additional orbital commands is obviously good, but if you only use them for mules you are wasting a huge amount of your investment. Use it to claim an additional base, and maynard scv's over there.
It's better to have 5 bases with your 5 orbital commands than have 3 bases and 2 in-base orbitals, although you can fly them out later. The use of command centers as firebases, or planetary fortresses for bases that need self-defense allows the use of mules all over the map.
It seems terran is the race that really, really wants to control the entire map. It allows mining out the entire map, which bolsters your income and also means that if the game goes long, your enemy will be forced to attack into you in order to claim a base, and it will be significantly depleted even if they succeed.
On December 03 2010 18:01 ledarsi wrote: It seems the orbital command is best used to grab additional bases rather than be built in-base. Having additional orbital commands is obviously good, but if you only use them for mules you are wasting a huge amount of your investment. Use it to claim an additional base, and maynard scv's over there.
It's better to have 5 bases with your 5 orbital commands than have 3 bases and 2 in-base orbitals, although you can fly them out later. The use of command centers as firebases, or planetary fortresses for bases that need self-defense allows the use of mules all over the map.
It seems terran is the race that really, really wants to control the entire map. It allows mining out the entire map, which bolsters your income and also means that if the game goes long, your enemy will be forced to attack into you in order to claim a base, and it will be significantly depleted even if they succeed.
A huge investment would be 30 SCVs, 2 Refineries, Missile Turrets, an adjoining PF...
Relative to that investment, a simple CC+OC is a pretty slim investment.
Also, the real gem of this strategy is in its ability to basically snipe an expansion. If you can hold an expansion for 90 seconds, you can ninja a round of mules (or two, energy permitting) for quick, boosted income. You don't lose 20-30 workers if/when the expo gets hit either.
On December 03 2010 18:01 ledarsi wrote: It seems the orbital command is best used to grab additional bases rather than be built in-base. Having additional orbital commands is obviously good, but if you only use them for mules you are wasting a huge amount of your investment. Use it to claim an additional base, and maynard scv's over there.
Exactly right. I already did the calculations on page 3 and stated that this mass OC is only cost effective when compared with more than 16 SCVs on the typical 8 mineral patches. But of course there is some use to it, when a terran has a very immobile army or when he reaches supply limit.
Aren't you completely ignoring build time and the fact that you have to save up freakin 400 minerals every time. That is a huge amount early game.
100 Seconds + 35 for the OC + 90 Seconds until it has reached the break-even point assuming your "supply-adjusted" costs are correct which I doubt anyways. You lose an scv mining for 100 Seconds compared to 30 seconds and you must have saved up 400 / 550 minerals.
Ur right in the middle of a fight and you have 2 factories and 3 barracks and need supply for the next round of units. 2 Tanks 3 Marauders = 12 supply. Either you chose 30 Seconds/ 200 minerals for 2 supply depots or you get 2 OCs in 135 Seconds, at least 800 minerals at once + the minerals that you need for all your units and a huge economical disadvantage until 180 seconds after that. That is a freakin long time.
It seems terran is the race that really, really wants to control the entire map. It allows mining out the entire map, which bolsters your income and also means that if the game goes long, your enemy will be forced to attack into you in order to claim a base, and it will be significantly depleted even if they succeed.
Terran? acting like humans? using all the natural resources up before moving on to the next world? no way!!! hahah. seriously yeah Terrans with many expos are scary. very very scary. too bad they seem to like 1-2 basing too much.
-Amount of time the SCV isn't mining minerals while building (Command Center take over 3x longer to build) -Having to spending the minerals earlier for a payout that comes later
The second one being the biggest. Most Terrans build their first depot at 10 supply, which would obviously be impossible with a CC because you'd have to start it 70 seconds earlier (difference in build time for CC and Depot). An SCV takes 17 seconds to build. You run into this same wall with the second and third depots too. If you adjust a build around this you can squeeze it in, you can actually stop building SCVs to get the CC out earlier, but that takes away a lot of the benefit.
Lastly, it takes 135 seconds to build an orbital command. You need a very efficient and creative build to be able to wait the time for the OC to come and start paying off.
I'd really like to see time and though put into actual builds for each matchup, and would love to see this work. Honestly though... I think it's just theorycraft and nothing more. We'll see.
I'm not sure if you are serious are not, if you are a cc takes alot longer to build then a depo I just can't imagine this working however, I would eat my words if I saw a decent game where this was done.
Having tested this idea, as far as I can tell, to its limit, my conclusion is that terran should be building command centers all the freaking time. They are very expensive at 400 minerals, but when you are playing standard 2 bases with lots of barracks that's a manageable amount to set aside for a command center from time to time. I've had good success with building one at a time, and just flying it out and starting the next one. This looks like some crazy terran expanding everywhere, not really like the sort of mass in-base orbital command that the OP is talking about, but the concept is the same.
Seriously, the ability to build a command center at a protected location, fly it out into dangerous areas at your discretion, and ninja-mule the daylights out of an expo (especially gold) significantly adds to the value of just having a command center lying around. Even if you can't use it right away, it contributes with scv production and the use of mules, and you can move it later.
I've had the most success with just taking the entire map because I can, even if it weakens my army to do so. It's easier to do than you would think, you just can't do it all right away. It does take time. Coupled with normal amounts of harass, such as with banshees, your opponent will be too busy to spot you taking the entire map, and probably unable to attack you even if he notices. Get more expansions than you can mine from effectively with scvs. Turn enough of them into orbital commands that you can mass mule whichever one is in the most danger, and then just pick up that base and move somewhere else.
So this is one of those strategies that's up there with the bunker teleporter and archon vortex. Retardedly powerful, but completely unrealistic and impractical.
If you happened to have 15 Orbital Commands lying around for some reason, however, this would be great.
Lowercase touched on a nice point, the 200/200 army for a strat like this would be huge since you don't need the same number of SCVs mid and late game.
As for numbers, since 4OCs per base in the early/early-mid game would be more than enough to satisfy high income needs, maps needs to be identified that can easily be walled with 1+ command center. Don't forget that to defend a strat like this bunkers become horribly valuable. Ledarsi also touched upon the concept of ninja-muling the gold expos, imagine getting to a gold base and having it be 3/4 mined out :trollface: ensues.
The biggest issue with this style is surviving the early pressure so that your 4OCs can really kick in. I doubt people will master this style, or even take the time to learn it, until someone finds a clean build to have OCs building and marines/maraduers pumping. If this can happen, then fuck Supply Depots.
Also, remember how I saw 10 marine in 7:30 with 4 OCs and Stim? With two bunkers at 7:30 and two OCs walling your base, you can easily survive early pressure, and let your massive income kick in, and then start shitting barracks and marines. I think once the 4OC are up, (which should be AROUND the number per base, since 4 mules gives something like 1500-1600 income off one base X_X), then the first real teching can happen, and once you need gas is when I would think you would take your nat, two more assimilators, and start chugging out anything.
Ledarsi also makes a good point, stacking your OCs may not be as effective has having them all over the map. On the other hand, you don't want to let your income OR supply die. I don't think you should be over-extending your first 4 OCs, but after that you will have a 2base income, so you can start to play more risky with your OCs, but don't forget to keep around 3-4 per base. Try these out, not on ladder, but just against the computer or your friends, try different approaches, rax first, cc first, etc. As much as BO optimizers are nice, they can't account for all of the things that you might need in a build. Safety is the main goal until you hit that critical mass of OCs.
Plus, its hard as shit to break a CC wall early game.
Obviously getting to carried away with this is going to result into you auto losing. But still... what if....
Adjust your build slightly, to facilitate one or two extra orbitals. All of a sudden you are producing way more then you should be off the amount of bases you have, allowing a turtling terran with siege tanks to power that much harder, without having to give up a good map position. It would be a good way to catch the opponent off guard, especially on maps with hard to defend 2/3rd bases.
Has anybody tried a multi-OC build that uses some mules but also calls down supply occasionally?
Calling down supply would also help bridge the gap in supply if you are trying to substitute OCs for supply depots. Basically, even call down supply becomes a good ability as long as you have the OC energy for it - if you had the energy, you'd want each supply depot to be x'd before you got to 200/200. Obviously in most cases you'd want to use mules instead, but as part of a build like this, maybe call-down supplies would be useful in a few key spots.. I wouldn't be surprised.
The way this build typically works out for me, you use calldown exactly twice. The first 50 energy when your first orbital command morphs, used on the first depot because it takes too long for your fast expand to finish. Make 2 barracks, and make a second depot while building your next command center. After that CC finishes and I'm close to max supply, I use supply drop again on the 2nd depot. After that it is possible to ride it out using only command centers, but I think it's probably a bad idea. Exactly two depots, both supply dropped on. Pretty well optimized. Problem is, if there's early aggro or an early timing push, you haven't got a snowball's chance in hell.
Yeah I'll be trying this first thing when I get off work... Imagine how awesome it would be to just float an orbital to a random base, drop 4-8 mules, and then 90 seconds later go to a different base. Even if he finds the base, he better find pretty quick after I drop those mules or he's it won't matter anyway since I won't lose 30 scvs.
On December 03 2010 21:07 terranghost wrote: I'm not sure if you are serious are not, if you are a cc takes alot longer to build then a depo I just can't imagine this working however, I would eat my words if I saw a decent game where this was done.
I'm not saying this works perfectly, but think about how many fewer depots you would need if you weren't constantly making scvs.
The issue that's behind all this discussion is the MULE's [lack of] supply cost. Zerg and Protoss can crank out workers extremely fast, it's true, but Terran can get zero-supply workers. A 200/200 army for Zerg or Protoss probably has 50+ workers in it. A 200/200 army for Terran (even without this strategy) could have much fewer, to the limit of one or two workers for construction (but seldom approaching that point).
The question is whether the Terran can make this army/worker ratio work for them early enough in the game. It'll be interesting to see!
This is excellent theory craft, and it looks like it has a lot of potential. I'm still reading through the comments, but(like several posters already mentioned) it takes forever to build a CC/OC.
Also if a couple templar were to feedback your OC's, morph into archons, and stop you from mining you'd be in serious trouble. Although it would take quite a handful(1-4, which is a heavy gas investment) of HT's to feedback all your OC's, but even if half of your OC's were fedback(?), it would spell doom for you. Turns out you can't feedback building's, but a ghost can EMP.
Also since, theoretically, you have no energy for scan's, DT are a big threat as well. If DT's were to attack at the end of your muling cycle, you should have enough energy for several scans, but your economy would suffer. If they attack right after you called down your mules, you're economy might be in trouble. If executed properly, a player can keep his/her DT’s alive and force you to waste scans. A quick snipe of the raven, and its mule-galore for DT's. -- The true power of this build comes from the number of OC’s you would have, and migrating bases every few minutes. Technically you should be stuck on one base, but you are mining at significantly higher rates than ‘standard’ mining. I would recommend 5 OC’s; the fifth for scans and migrating while one mineral patch is running out, so you can seamlessly switch bases as one dries out. Also you’d want to keep a base at your main and natural for gas(most likely more). This is also a weakness since after 3-4 swaps your main OC is across the map from your building structures, and your army can’t be in two places at once. Everything I just said is also theory craft, and also heavily skewed towards Protoss(don’t play Zerg or Terran) counters for this build. This seems like this build sets up for heavy early turtling, and pushing the towards mid-late game, obviously vulnerable to 1 base pushes/allins.
Tl;DR: HT’s can feedback your OC’s, morph into archons and kill your economy. Turns out you can't feedback building, but you can get ghost's to EMP. No energy left for scans, so DT’s are a big threat. After 3-4 base swaps, your army is spread out, defending your mining base or defending your building structures. I would recommend building 5 OC’s for seamless base swapping, and extra energy for scans. This build seems like heavy turtle for early game, and pushing for a heavy mid-late game macro advantage.
Edit: Just saw Griffiths' 200/200 13 minute 4OC push thread. I don't have time to read through it right now, but a quick skim, makes it seem very powerful against Zerg, and could be tweaked for TvP.
Well, I played a game today vs painuser where I used 3 gate pressure to bring him down to 6 scvs vs my 29 probes (2 gas). I was on 3 gate robo (vs 3 rax) pumping gateway units and immortals but after I broke him, he gave up on gas and put ALL SIX (i know!) of his scvs on minerals with constant mule call downs. the result? he had ~550 sustained mineral income against my ~750 sustained mineral income. So he could basically pump stim marines from his 3 rax (1 reactor) but at that state of the game I couldnt counter marines (tier 1 vs tier 1 lululul) and I had a few left over immortals clunking around. Needless to say I lost the game.
I'm not sure if this pertains exactly to this thread but the game really made my brain hurt and I was looking for an outlet for my mule nerd rage xD
I think a lot of people in this thread are over-thinking and making this way too complicated. You don't have to do this to try to optimize for the end game, since losing in the early game or mid game can dominate endgame-centric builds.
As long as you are mining off of at least one base, any in-base orbital command is a quarter of the mineral income from a fully saturated base. This is without any extra surface area for your opponent to attack you on. THAT is what is truly broken about this idea. Protoss and Zerg have to open up another base to getting attacked in order to get any more mineral income once their bases are fully saturated, while Terrans don't.
Any time that the Terran gains an advantage in relative army size, they can immediately throw down an in-base orbital to turn it into a safe economic edge going into the late game. The orbital pays for itself in supply + mules in about four and a half minutes, so that's the timing window for the opponent to either get more effective bases, better tech, or break you with a timing push.
Basically, any time the Terran could be adding a base, they can instead add economy without adding bases for roughly comparable costs. You can no longer assume that the Terran's economy hasn't improved just because they haven't taken any more expansions - you have to scout their base to know their economic output.
On December 04 2010 02:16 Crimson.Void wrote: Also if a couple templar were to feedback your OC's
IIRC, you can't feedback buildings. You can EMP buildings, though, but that turns it into a TvT strategy where you drop a ghost into their orbital farm and EMP it for massive damage.
@ThrustVectoring, @Whitewing: I could have sworn I saw a replay of a HT feedbacking an OC, maybe I was mistaken with a ghost or I just dreamed up such an ability. Although it seems kind of odd that you can't feedback a building.
This is a great concept, and an example of how abandoning orthodox, BW-type thinking (Terrans have to build depots, right?) can yield game-breaking SC2 strategies.
Lol alot of the numbers here are wrong (maybe exaggerated on purpose) but without the mules terran wouldnt be able to keep up with the other races.... Zerg being able to make 6 drones at the time it takes to make 1 scv and protoss being able to chrono boost probes, each race has its pro's and con's and the reason mules can oversaturate mineral patches is because terran is the defensive race and it allows us to turtle more effectively.
So, after some more theorizing and testing, Artosis hit the nail on the head.
Mid to late game, Terran's start to gather large amount of minerals that become hard to spend. During beta players were dumping these minerals into PFs and more marines, however, once a steady army production has been established off of two bases, little stands in a turtle Terran's way of topping 3-4 more OCs. Every so often, adding an extra OC once you start farming them will make your income huge.
Terran players, try normal early game openers, and once you get into a comfortable mid game, try adding extra OCs to your build, and I am 100% positive your win ratio will start to go up. Taking a third might not be as costly as once thought, simply fly to a base, mine 1/3 to a 1/2 of it and bounce, two or three large mule calldowns can completely decimate an expo. If you use PFs at clutch expos to mine to, you can setup assimilators as well to get gas. Pretty soon your econ is mobile, large, and highly difficult to prevent. Terran's can choke out opponents in the late game simply by stealing minerals from their opponents. If a zerg tries to expo to a 4th that is already at 2/3 or 1/2 or its total value makes that expansion MUCH less scary as a 2 or 3 base Terran.
With time this will start to develop more, but it is an awesome step in SC2, because it shows the community is really starting to think about how this game can be played better. To think that 30to1 came up with this idea 6 months after release is awesome, imagine what another 6 will do for us!
What that hell...? This is insane and unbelievably creative thinking OP. Props to you! I am very interested to see how this plays out. Ladder is going to be fun for a few days in all XvT matchups :D
It's a pretty awesome concept, and I think it will lead to the development of a powerful mass orbital build, but more likely it will be on two or more bases and probably slowed down a little bit for safety. But even if it isn't a race to 200/200 you can really apply constant pressure with a flood of units. Unfortunately if they're all marines you can't just a-move sauron style against aoe like banelings, colossi, and tanks. But the macro potential of a Sauron Terran build is very exciting to me, I would love more replays!
edit: I forgot you didn't have replays in your OP, that was Griffith's thread that had a few. Either way, you should both post more replays!
These are the type of threads I love reading. This is creative and out of the box. If refined this could lead to some really interesting late game strategies for Terran. Undiscovered concepts like this are what made BW evolve into the game it is today, and I have no doubt SC2 will similarly evolve. Blue star for you OP.
I hate theory-crafting, because I feel it's a tool for asperger candidates or individuals who have undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder. At any rate, I want to just say that every race gets a macro mechanic that can be viewed as *broken*. Now, if you're Artosis, you're just going to troll-lo-lo-lo your way, because of your obvious bias for Zerg. And he's probably upset at the recent Terran dominance, after finding out you can 2-rax, or early-push a greedy Zerg, and damage them severely.
But, really, this is why Zergs were *exploiting* hatch first, and this is why fast-expanding is economically advantaged. This doesn't ever take account, though, for *real* gaming factors; you know actually being attacked? needing units to defend? needing a specific timing? just some examples.
You know, spending all your perfectly placed mule minerals on command centers, instead of units, or spending all your chrono-boosts on probes, instead of tech, or spending all your larvae on drones, instead of units. Or, making more hatcheries for spawn-larvae injection spam, WHICH, has the ability to re-food a 200/200 army, in mere seconds.
The simple fact is with harass, and you know, actual people attacking you, forcing you to select *natural* play, you're theory-crafting turns into a pile of steaming horse manure.
On December 04 2010 04:15 ffdestiny wrote: I hate theory-crafting, because I feel it's a tool for asperger candidates or individuals who have undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder. At any rate, I want to just say that every race gets a macro mechanic that can be viewed as *broken*. Now, if you're Artosis, you're just going to troll-lo-lo-lo your way, because of your obvious bias for Zerg. And he's probably upset at the recent Terran dominance, after finding out you can 2-rax, or early-push a greedy Zerg, and damage them severely.
But, really, this is why Zergs were *exploiting* hatch first, and this is why fast-expanding is economically advantaged. This doesn't ever take account, though, for *real* gaming factors; you know actually being attacked? needing units to defend? needing a specific timing? just some examples.
You know, spending all your perfectly placed mule minerals on command centers, instead of units, or spending all your chrono-boosts on probes, instead of tech, or spending all your larvae on drones, instead of units. Or, making more hatcheries for spawn-larvae injection spam, WHICH, has the ability to re-food a 200/200 army, in mere seconds.
The simple fact is with harass, and you know, actual people attacking you, forcing you to select *natural* play, you're theory-crafting turns into a pile of steaming horse manure.
Exactly, that's why now we wait for some Korean, with ridiculous amounts of time to perfect it, to come along and show us a solid BO. The build has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is, usually, theorycrafting.
On December 04 2010 04:15 ffdestiny wrote: The simple fact is with harass, and you know, actual people attacking you, forcing you to select *natural* play, you're theory-crafting turns into a pile of steaming horse manure.
You missed the point of the thread. No one is saying "omg 4 ocs OP early game." We are all interested in the viability of making OCs in the late game in mass.
On December 04 2010 04:15 ffdestiny wrote: I hate theory-crafting, because I feel it's a tool for asperger candidates or individuals who have undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder. At any rate, I want to just say that every race gets a macro mechanic that can be viewed as *broken*. Now, if you're Artosis, you're just going to troll-lo-lo-lo your way, because of your obvious bias for Zerg. And he's probably upset at the recent Terran dominance, after finding out you can 2-rax, or early-push a greedy Zerg, and damage them severely.
But, really, this is why Zergs were *exploiting* hatch first, and this is why fast-expanding is economically advantaged. This doesn't ever take account, though, for *real* gaming factors; you know actually being attacked? needing units to defend? needing a specific timing? just some examples.
You know, spending all your perfectly placed mule minerals on command centers, instead of units, or spending all your chrono-boosts on probes, instead of tech, or spending all your larvae on drones, instead of units. Or, making more hatcheries for spawn-larvae injection spam, WHICH, has the ability to re-food a 200/200 army, in mere seconds.
The simple fact is with harass, and you know, actual people attacking you, forcing you to select *natural* play, you're theory-crafting turns into a pile of steaming horse manure.
I understand what you are saying here, but you have to understand that theory crafting is the first step to a meta game shift. Take guineapig's skytoss against zerg. This build probably emerged with some one thinking, hey, void rays are good against zerg right now because so many zergs are favoring roach play. So then he decided to 1gate into stargate play after perhaps posting a thread on a korean teamliquid site saying "hey guys. Roaches can't shoot up. So we should make only air units to beat them" and probably got 50 pages of people yelling at him "stfu noob, stupid idea you'll die before you get there. stop theorycrafting and making collosus."
But then it ocurred to him that if he forge expanded on maps where he could do it safely, he would have enough gas to get up an adequate number of gas-heavy air units on equal terms with the zerg. And then he discovered: Hey! when I make a bunch of void rays, the other guy has to make hydralisks because unlike roaches, hydralisks shoot up! So when he makes hydralisks, I can transition into robo tech and smash his face.
And then suddenly a viable playstyle was born.
So I'm not saying we are going to see terrans suddenly massing orbital commands and skipping depots, but I've already seen a few builds where a terran will make an in-base OC very quickly just for the additional mules (and some scv production, but who needs those?) without instantly floating it to the natural. So maybe we will see more of these builds, and maybe we won't. But it is perfectly acceptable for the OP to share with us his numbers and experience for discussion.
This does alright if you are able to defend early pushes. A friend and I were playing around with this during Day9's announce your unit contest. You pretty much need to rush a PF at your choke to survive anything. Expanding to your natural is also very difficult. I believe this does have legitimacy for mid-game economics for Terran though since it's essentially a supply depot that pays for itself. The problem is you're sacrificing units (Helions/Marines) now, to get more units later. Any strategies that do that leave themselves open to a variety of timing attacks that their opponent can capitalize on.
Most people are also missing a legitimate use of this strategy, that is all but devastating to an opponent if it gets up running. You can actually summon a shit ton of mules into their mineral line after a scan and mine them out very quickly. We've had it work exceptionally well in 2v2 where one person feeds the other, and late game we just starve our opponents out by mining their base out while the fed person draws attention. Again, the difficulty there is that getting to that point is never reliable, and thus the strategy is flawed. Absolutely hilarious, but flawed.
In 1v1 though, this is really is difficult to make work. It's too vulnerable to harass and gives you opponent complete map control, which is dangerous in any match up. It for sure has a legitimate context in the mid-game though when you can afford to spare those minerals and don't have to forfeit map control to do it.
On December 04 2010 04:15 ffdestiny wrote: I hate theory-crafting, because I feel it's a tool for asperger candidates or individuals who have undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder. At any rate, I want to just say that every race gets a macro mechanic that can be viewed as *broken*. Now, if you're Artosis, you're just going to troll-lo-lo-lo your way, because of your obvious bias for Zerg. And he's probably upset at the recent Terran dominance, after finding out you can 2-rax, or early-push a greedy Zerg, and damage them severely.
But, really, this is why Zergs were *exploiting* hatch first, and this is why fast-expanding is economically advantaged. This doesn't ever take account, though, for *real* gaming factors; you know actually being attacked? needing units to defend? needing a specific timing? just some examples.
You know, spending all your perfectly placed mule minerals on command centers, instead of units, or spending all your chrono-boosts on probes, instead of tech, or spending all your larvae on drones, instead of units. Or, making more hatcheries for spawn-larvae injection spam, WHICH, has the ability to re-food a 200/200 army, in mere seconds.
The simple fact is with harass, and you know, actual people attacking you, forcing you to select *natural* play, you're theory-crafting turns into a pile of steaming horse manure.
This is what happens when you just read the opening post and don't read any of the following discussion. The general consensus is that this is far more viable as a mid/late game economic boost rather than as an early "economic cheese" build. The fact of the matter is that mules allow a Terran to increase their rate of income without increasing their footprint on a map. All other races would have to expand and thus make themselves more vulnerable to attack.
Other posts worried about mining out quickly are poorly thought out. You'll always want minerals now rather than minerals later.
Using 2 OCs on rocked off Gold Expansions to prevent an opponent from chasing you out and taking up camp themselves is useful. I think that Jungle Basin is a really good level for this sort of build with 2 Expansions walled off with Rocks, 2 Expansions that you can wall off with 6 OCs, plus 2 Gold Expands that aren't rocked off. Lost Temple would also be a good level for this unless your opponent is Protoss and uses the Warp Prism Elevator trick.
But DT's really aren't that much a threat against this build since often you'll have an OC within 10 seconds of Muling or scanning... It's not like all your OC's energy are aligned. I've had one Protoss player go GG before I even pressed out of my natural with my marine ball because he went with a heavy DT play. When he saw my wall, he GG'd right there.
On December 04 2010 04:52 Conrose wrote: Using 2 OCs on rocked off Gold Expansions to prevent an opponent from chasing you out and taking up camp themselves is useful. I think that Jungle Basin is a really good level for this sort of build with 2 Expansions walled off with Rocks, 2 Expansions that you can wall off with 6 OCs, plus 2 Gold Expands that aren't rocked off. Lost Temple would also be a good level for this unless your opponent is Protoss and uses the Warp Prism Elevator trick.
But DT's really aren't that much a threat against this build since often you'll have an OC within 10 seconds of Muling or scanning... It's not like all your OC's energy are aligned. I've had one Protoss player go GG before I even pressed out of my natural with my marine ball because he went with a heavy DT play. When he saw my wall, he GG'd right there.
Island maps are good for this 2 - LT and SS also delta quadrant because of back door. I think shakuras is also good because you can float and orbital to the middle base. Steppes could also be viable for one of the corner blocked bases - lol thats more than half the maps
I don't know , played against this on the ladder today. I had 4 running bases on xel naga and he was on 2. he had an endless amount of MM ball coming in and my lingbling muta army couldn't keep up at all. I probably should've scouted him earlier , but meh , thought he was some kind of scrub with 5 bunkers at his front . were like 4 orbitals in his main. .
Just when I thought his push was over , he came in with another fairly sized army and sniped my expos . .
I don't know , played against this on the ladder today. I had 4 running bases on xel naga and he was on 2. he had an endless amount of MM ball coming in and my lingbling muta army couldn't keep up at all. I probably should've scouted him earlier , but meh , thought he was some kind of scrub with 5 bunkers at his front . were like 4 orbitals in his main. .
Just when I thought his push was over , he came in with another fairly sized army and sniped my expos . .
1st Post: Registered on TL mainly because if this thread.
Been testing this build for a couple of hours against AI. Its hard to pull at first but once you fly those OCs around, the mass of SCVs + attacker units mid game sure is fun hahaha
Gold star for thinking creatively. However, this only allows you to make marines, CCs&OCs and hellions in huge amounts (and supply depots, but u know...). If this can solidly let you mass up to 200 food marines/hellions in under 10 minutes, it'd be useful. I'm not sure about broken, but then we'd be talking useful. I'm gonna get really excited the first time I see this on the ladder.
People who say that this build only gives you minerals are not really paying attention to what you are building.
You are building structures which you can move around the map freely. And wherever they land, they can harvest either minerals or gas. And it only takes 6 workers to harvest maximal gas from a base. And a command center can carry 5. With the neosteel frame upgrade a command center can carry 10 workers. And mules can be called down anywhere, so you can place your orbitals wherever they're safe and put gas there and enough workers to mine it. At dangerous bases you just use fortresses or command centers which can shelter a small number of workers.
I think someone was about to use this build on me on Delta, only i 3 warp gated and started warping in units into his back expo before anything kicked in.
Wouldn't this build have problems with fast collosi (really fast) or fast siege tanks.
I think fast stim would work wonders with this build, being able to throw away groups of mnm to take out chunks of an enemy army or base is nuts with the income the mules provide.
On December 04 2010 05:04 kurrysauce wrote: I don't know , played against this on the ladder today. I had 4 running bases on xel naga and he was on 2. he had an endless amount of MM ball coming in and my lingbling muta army couldn't keep up at all. I probably should've scouted him earlier , but meh , thought he was some kind of scrub with 5 bunkers at his front . were like 4 orbitals in his main. .
Just when I thought his push was over , he came in with another fairly sized army and sniped my expos . .
Thats the other point of doing this. You thought you were playing 4 base vs 2, but the economy was closer to 4 bases vs 3 due to the orbitals. You can't tell the difference without scouting the main, unlike when someone takes their third base. 5 bunkers at the front was kind of a scrub move, its better to pressure harder with an army and slowly add orbitals in your main when safe, but whatever.
Maybe bunker up the front, then sell bunkers as you push out and spend the minerals on another orbital or something like that.
I've thought about this build as soon as I started playing SC2 for the first time and realized CCs gave you supply >_> I assumed something was wrong because no one did it, but good job calling attention to it
I can imagine this floating CCs thing to be so annoying on Lost Temple islands and what not, lol
On December 04 2010 04:15 ffdestiny wrote: I hate theory-crafting, because I feel it's a tool for asperger candidates or individuals who have undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder. At any rate, I want to just say that every race gets a macro mechanic that can be viewed as *broken*. Now, if you're Artosis, you're just going to troll-lo-lo-lo your way, because of your obvious bias for Zerg. And he's probably upset at the recent Terran dominance, after finding out you can 2-rax, or early-push a greedy Zerg, and damage them severely.
But, really, this is why Zergs were *exploiting* hatch first, and this is why fast-expanding is economically advantaged. This doesn't ever take account, though, for *real* gaming factors; you know actually being attacked? needing units to defend? needing a specific timing? just some examples.
You know, spending all your perfectly placed mule minerals on command centers, instead of units, or spending all your chrono-boosts on probes, instead of tech, or spending all your larvae on drones, instead of units. Or, making more hatcheries for spawn-larvae injection spam, WHICH, has the ability to re-food a 200/200 army, in mere seconds.
The simple fact is with harass, and you know, actual people attacking you, forcing you to select *natural* play, you're theory-crafting turns into a pile of steaming horse manure.
This is what happens when you just read the opening post and don't read any of the following discussion. The general consensus is that this is far more viable as a mid/late game economic boost rather than as an early "economic cheese" build. The fact of the matter is that mules allow a Terran to increase their rate of income without increasing their footprint on a map. All other races would have to expand and thus make themselves more vulnerable to attack.
Other posts worried about mining out quickly are poorly thought out. You'll always want minerals now rather than minerals later.
Just wanted to say that mules need a mineral patch to go to, and just like having more hatcheries or nexus, you invest in their potential. Again, there is no discussion here, other than, "Hey guys, Terran has a macro mechanic! Let's build more command centers!" It's the same as saying, "Hey guys Protoss can chrono-boost more probes, and with more nexus, have an incredible economy." Or, "Hey guys, Zerg can build more queens and hatcheries, and use spawn larvae to make more drones, and have an incredible economy!"
On December 04 2010 04:15 ffdestiny wrote: I hate theory-crafting, because I feel it's a tool for asperger candidates or individuals who have undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder. At any rate, I want to just say that every race gets a macro mechanic that can be viewed as *broken*. Now, if you're Artosis, you're just going to troll-lo-lo-lo your way, because of your obvious bias for Zerg. And he's probably upset at the recent Terran dominance, after finding out you can 2-rax, or early-push a greedy Zerg, and damage them severely.
But, really, this is why Zergs were *exploiting* hatch first, and this is why fast-expanding is economically advantaged. This doesn't ever take account, though, for *real* gaming factors; you know actually being attacked? needing units to defend? needing a specific timing? just some examples.
You know, spending all your perfectly placed mule minerals on command centers, instead of units, or spending all your chrono-boosts on probes, instead of tech, or spending all your larvae on drones, instead of units. Or, making more hatcheries for spawn-larvae injection spam, WHICH, has the ability to re-food a 200/200 army, in mere seconds.
The simple fact is with harass, and you know, actual people attacking you, forcing you to select *natural* play, you're theory-crafting turns into a pile of steaming horse manure.
This is what happens when you just read the opening post and don't read any of the following discussion. The general consensus is that this is far more viable as a mid/late game economic boost rather than as an early "economic cheese" build. The fact of the matter is that mules allow a Terran to increase their rate of income without increasing their footprint on a map. All other races would have to expand and thus make themselves more vulnerable to attack.
Other posts worried about mining out quickly are poorly thought out. You'll always want minerals now rather than minerals later.
Just wanted to say that mules need a mineral patch to go to, and just like having more hatcheries or nexus, you invest in their potential. Again, there is no discussion here, other than, "Hey guys, Terran has a macro mechanic! Let's build more command centers!" It's the same as saying, "Hey guys Protoss can chrono-boost more probes, and with more nexus, have an incredible economy." Or, "Hey guys, Zerg can build more queens and hatcheries, and use spawn larvae to make more drones, and have an incredible economy!"
Those require supply. Still missing the entire point of the thread.
On December 04 2010 04:15 ffdestiny wrote: I hate theory-crafting, because I feel it's a tool for asperger candidates or individuals who have undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder. At any rate, I want to just say that every race gets a macro mechanic that can be viewed as *broken*. Now, if you're Artosis, you're just going to troll-lo-lo-lo your way, because of your obvious bias for Zerg. And he's probably upset at the recent Terran dominance, after finding out you can 2-rax, or early-push a greedy Zerg, and damage them severely.
But, really, this is why Zergs were *exploiting* hatch first, and this is why fast-expanding is economically advantaged. This doesn't ever take account, though, for *real* gaming factors; you know actually being attacked? needing units to defend? needing a specific timing? just some examples.
You know, spending all your perfectly placed mule minerals on command centers, instead of units, or spending all your chrono-boosts on probes, instead of tech, or spending all your larvae on drones, instead of units. Or, making more hatcheries for spawn-larvae injection spam, WHICH, has the ability to re-food a 200/200 army, in mere seconds.
The simple fact is with harass, and you know, actual people attacking you, forcing you to select *natural* play, you're theory-crafting turns into a pile of steaming horse manure.
This is what happens when you just read the opening post and don't read any of the following discussion. The general consensus is that this is far more viable as a mid/late game economic boost rather than as an early "economic cheese" build. The fact of the matter is that mules allow a Terran to increase their rate of income without increasing their footprint on a map. All other races would have to expand and thus make themselves more vulnerable to attack.
Other posts worried about mining out quickly are poorly thought out. You'll always want minerals now rather than minerals later.
Just wanted to say that mules need a mineral patch to go to, and just like having more hatcheries or nexus, you invest in their potential. Again, there is no discussion here, other than, "Hey guys, Terran has a macro mechanic! Let's build more command centers!" It's the same as saying, "Hey guys Protoss can chrono-boost more probes, and with more nexus, have an incredible economy." Or, "Hey guys, Zerg can build more queens and hatcheries, and use spawn larvae to make more drones, and have an incredible economy!"
But it's not the same because Zerg and Protoss must expend supply in order to receive their benefits - their macro mechanic only serves to get a larger number of workers out faster. The Terran macro mechanic isn't limited in this way - a Terran using their macro mechanic this way can have a minimal number of SCVs and a larger percentage of their supply in army. If a Protoss or Zerg needs ~70 Probes/Drones to fully saturate three bases but a Terran only needs ~25 SCVs, that's another 45 supply that can be devoted to their army. Combine that with some of the most cost-efficient and supply-efficient units in the game and you get something that has many late-game implications.
Sorry if this has already been said, I don't quite have time to read 16 pages of posts.
The idea is very cool and may be viable in any number of ways. But I have to make a note about the errors in the theory because I'm really sick of seeing incorrect economics applied to SC. Almost all the SC economics (especially re mules) that I see says, "If I spend x minerals now, and it results in >x minerals at some later point, then this is good!"
That is wrong. That assumes that your alternative is doing NOTHING with your x minerals. But doing nothing with your minerals is horrible. Just like a prospective investor calculates his profit over business interest, you have to calculate the return on your investment compared to the return of simply building workers steadily.
Example: An OC costs 550/150 to build and takes 155 seconds. Mules mine about 170 minerals per minute. Assuming one mule constantly (I know that's off by a few seconds), it's easy to do the math and say, "After 195 seconds, an OC will have paid itself off."
Wrong. After 195 seconds, an OC has paid itself off compared to doing NOTHING. But actually, if you had just steadily built workers, you would break even (including the cost of supply) only seconds later, and with greater ongoing income (8 SCVs > 1 mule). So an OC isn't per se a better investment than just building workers. It's just a better investment than doing nothing.
Obviously this doesn't account for island expos, saturation issues, 200-food encounters, etc. But that's why SC2 is a game and not a math problem.
On December 04 2010 06:10 DeBurd wrote: Example: An OC costs 550/150 to build and takes 155 seconds. .
What is the /150?
People are still missing the point here too. It's not about being more economically viable than building workers. It's about being able to have a strong and fast tier 1/2 army and your ability to cut down on some supply depots.
On December 04 2010 04:15 ffdestiny wrote: I hate theory-crafting, because I feel it's a tool for asperger candidates or individuals who have undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder. At any rate, I want to just say that every race gets a macro mechanic that can be viewed as *broken*. Now, if you're Artosis, you're just going to troll-lo-lo-lo your way, because of your obvious bias for Zerg. And he's probably upset at the recent Terran dominance, after finding out you can 2-rax, or early-push a greedy Zerg, and damage them severely.
But, really, this is why Zergs were *exploiting* hatch first, and this is why fast-expanding is economically advantaged. This doesn't ever take account, though, for *real* gaming factors; you know actually being attacked? needing units to defend? needing a specific timing? just some examples.
You know, spending all your perfectly placed mule minerals on command centers, instead of units, or spending all your chrono-boosts on probes, instead of tech, or spending all your larvae on drones, instead of units. Or, making more hatcheries for spawn-larvae injection spam, WHICH, has the ability to re-food a 200/200 army, in mere seconds.
The simple fact is with harass, and you know, actual people attacking you, forcing you to select *natural* play, you're theory-crafting turns into a pile of steaming horse manure.
This is what happens when you just read the opening post and don't read any of the following discussion. The general consensus is that this is far more viable as a mid/late game economic boost rather than as an early "economic cheese" build. The fact of the matter is that mules allow a Terran to increase their rate of income without increasing their footprint on a map. All other races would have to expand and thus make themselves more vulnerable to attack.
Other posts worried about mining out quickly are poorly thought out. You'll always want minerals now rather than minerals later.
Just wanted to say that mules need a mineral patch to go to, and just like having more hatcheries or nexus, you invest in their potential. Again, there is no discussion here, other than, "Hey guys, Terran has a macro mechanic! Let's build more command centers!" It's the same as saying, "Hey guys Protoss can chrono-boost more probes, and with more nexus, have an incredible economy." Or, "Hey guys, Zerg can build more queens and hatcheries, and use spawn larvae to make more drones, and have an incredible economy!"
But it's not the same because Zerg and Protoss must expend supply in order to receive their benefits - their macro mechanic only serves to get a larger number of workers out faster. The Terran macro mechanic isn't limited in this way - a Terran using their macro mechanic this way can have a minimal number of SCVs and a larger percentage of their supply in army. If a Protoss or Zerg needs ~70 Probes/Drones to fully saturate three bases but a Terran only needs ~25 SCVs, that's another 45 supply that can be devoted to their army. Combine that with some of the most cost-efficient and supply-efficient units in the game and you get something that has many late-game implications.
The "but it's not the same!" arguments revolve around the basis that it actually is the same. For example, "Hey, that candy is just the same as that one!", "No, it's not the same!" repeat....
Anyway. Did you know that Zerg has to make more overlords for drones, and Protoss the same for pylons and probes? You see, the supply mechanic is actually fundamentally flawed in favor for Zerg, because of their macro mechanic. Lose 25 overlords to a nuke? Just re-make them instantly! Want to pop out of 150 cap food instantly? Just instantly smash V!
EDIT: Thanks for proving my point, I could of just used this quote:
"Terran macro mechanic isn't limited in this way - a Terran using their macro mechanic this way can have a minimal number of SCVs and a larger percentage of their supply in army." Almost as good as Zerg can!
On December 04 2010 06:10 DeBurd wrote: Sorry if this has already been said, I don't quite have time to read 16 pages of posts.
The idea is very cool and may be viable in any number of ways. But I have to make a note about the errors in the theory because I'm really sick of seeing incorrect economics applied to SC. Almost all the SC economics (especially re mules) that I see says, "If I spend x minerals now, and it results in >x minerals at some later point, then this is good!"
That is wrong. That assumes that your alternative is doing NOTHING with your x minerals. But doing nothing with your minerals is horrible. Just like a prospective investor calculates his profit over business interest, you have to calculate the return on your investment compared to the return of simply building workers steadily.
Example: An OC costs 550/150 to build and takes 155 seconds. Mules mine about 170 minerals per minute. Assuming one mule constantly (I know that's off by a few seconds), it's easy to do the math and say, "After 195 seconds, an OC will have paid itself off."
Wrong. After 195 seconds, an OC has paid itself off compared to doing NOTHING. But actually, if you had just steadily built workers, you would break even (including the cost of supply) only seconds later, and with greater ongoing income (8 SCVs > 1 mule). So an OC isn't per se a better investment than just building workers. It's just a better investment than doing nothing.
Obviously this doesn't account for island expos, saturation issues, 200-food encounters, etc. But that's why SC2 is a game and not a math problem.
Your last sentence is what this is supposed to address, that saturation is the primary bottleneck for income. Using mules removes that bottleneck and allows for 10 rax play off of two bases, while maximizing the value of a 200 food army. The paying for itself thing is more about being able to defend yourself while setting up the OCs. That's the primary issue with the build
On December 04 2010 04:15 ffdestiny wrote: I hate theory-crafting, because I feel it's a tool for asperger candidates or individuals who have undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder. At any rate, I want to just say that every race gets a macro mechanic that can be viewed as *broken*. Now, if you're Artosis, you're just going to troll-lo-lo-lo your way, because of your obvious bias for Zerg. And he's probably upset at the recent Terran dominance, after finding out you can 2-rax, or early-push a greedy Zerg, and damage them severely.
But, really, this is why Zergs were *exploiting* hatch first, and this is why fast-expanding is economically advantaged. This doesn't ever take account, though, for *real* gaming factors; you know actually being attacked? needing units to defend? needing a specific timing? just some examples.
You know, spending all your perfectly placed mule minerals on command centers, instead of units, or spending all your chrono-boosts on probes, instead of tech, or spending all your larvae on drones, instead of units. Or, making more hatcheries for spawn-larvae injection spam, WHICH, has the ability to re-food a 200/200 army, in mere seconds.
The simple fact is with harass, and you know, actual people attacking you, forcing you to select *natural* play, you're theory-crafting turns into a pile of steaming horse manure.
This is what happens when you just read the opening post and don't read any of the following discussion. The general consensus is that this is far more viable as a mid/late game economic boost rather than as an early "economic cheese" build. The fact of the matter is that mules allow a Terran to increase their rate of income without increasing their footprint on a map. All other races would have to expand and thus make themselves more vulnerable to attack.
Other posts worried about mining out quickly are poorly thought out. You'll always want minerals now rather than minerals later.
Just wanted to say that mules need a mineral patch to go to, and just like having more hatcheries or nexus, you invest in their potential. Again, there is no discussion here, other than, "Hey guys, Terran has a macro mechanic! Let's build more command centers!" It's the same as saying, "Hey guys Protoss can chrono-boost more probes, and with more nexus, have an incredible economy." Or, "Hey guys, Zerg can build more queens and hatcheries, and use spawn larvae to make more drones, and have an incredible economy!"
But it's not the same because Zerg and Protoss must expend supply in order to receive their benefits - their macro mechanic only serves to get a larger number of workers out faster. The Terran macro mechanic isn't limited in this way - a Terran using their macro mechanic this way can have a minimal number of SCVs and a larger percentage of their supply in army. If a Protoss or Zerg needs ~70 Probes/Drones to fully saturate three bases but a Terran only needs ~25 SCVs, that's another 45 supply that can be devoted to their army. Combine that with some of the most cost-efficient and supply-efficient units in the game and you get something that has many late-game implications.
The "but it's not the same!" arguments revolve around the basis that it actually is the same. For example, "Hey, that candy is just the same as that one!", "No, it's not the same!" repeat....
Anyway. Did you know that Zerg has to make more overlords for drones, and Protoss the same for pylons and probes? You see, the supply mechanic is actually fundamentally flawed in favor for Zerg, because of their macro mechanic. Lose 25 overlords to a nuke? Just re-make them instantly! Want to pop out of 150 cap food instantly? Just instantly smash V!
The build times between a supply depot and overlord are a 5 second difference. How is spamming 10 overlords any different from spamming 10 supply depots?
Your arguments are really flawed.
Terrans may lose the mining time of those SCVs, but Zergs lose the ability to produce drones and army with those larva. They have an equal trade off.
Edit: After reading your posts, I've come to the conclusion that you have no reading comprehension. Most likely, you are in the 16 year old range and just got promoted to platinum.
Interesting idea...but there's too many problems with this. I can think of a few just off the top of my head.
CCs take a very long time to build, and are a huge mineral sink early game. If you start building CCs early game, you won't have any units/tech to defend early attacks. If you build your CCs later on, it may be too late to get the mining advantage because your opponent is not likely to let you sit in 2 base and do your own thing before scouting/attacking.
On December 04 2010 04:15 ffdestiny wrote: I hate theory-crafting, because I feel it's a tool for asperger candidates or individuals who have undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder. At any rate, I want to just say that every race gets a macro mechanic that can be viewed as *broken*. Now, if you're Artosis, you're just going to troll-lo-lo-lo your way, because of your obvious bias for Zerg. And he's probably upset at the recent Terran dominance, after finding out you can 2-rax, or early-push a greedy Zerg, and damage them severely.
But, really, this is why Zergs were *exploiting* hatch first, and this is why fast-expanding is economically advantaged. This doesn't ever take account, though, for *real* gaming factors; you know actually being attacked? needing units to defend? needing a specific timing? just some examples.
You know, spending all your perfectly placed mule minerals on command centers, instead of units, or spending all your chrono-boosts on probes, instead of tech, or spending all your larvae on drones, instead of units. Or, making more hatcheries for spawn-larvae injection spam, WHICH, has the ability to re-food a 200/200 army, in mere seconds.
The simple fact is with harass, and you know, actual people attacking you, forcing you to select *natural* play, you're theory-crafting turns into a pile of steaming horse manure.
This is what happens when you just read the opening post and don't read any of the following discussion. The general consensus is that this is far more viable as a mid/late game economic boost rather than as an early "economic cheese" build. The fact of the matter is that mules allow a Terran to increase their rate of income without increasing their footprint on a map. All other races would have to expand and thus make themselves more vulnerable to attack.
Other posts worried about mining out quickly are poorly thought out. You'll always want minerals now rather than minerals later.
Just wanted to say that mules need a mineral patch to go to, and just like having more hatcheries or nexus, you invest in their potential. Again, there is no discussion here, other than, "Hey guys, Terran has a macro mechanic! Let's build more command centers!" It's the same as saying, "Hey guys Protoss can chrono-boost more probes, and with more nexus, have an incredible economy." Or, "Hey guys, Zerg can build more queens and hatcheries, and use spawn larvae to make more drones, and have an incredible economy!"
But it's not the same because Zerg and Protoss must expend supply in order to receive their benefits - their macro mechanic only serves to get a larger number of workers out faster. The Terran macro mechanic isn't limited in this way - a Terran using their macro mechanic this way can have a minimal number of SCVs and a larger percentage of their supply in army. If a Protoss or Zerg needs ~70 Probes/Drones to fully saturate three bases but a Terran only needs ~25 SCVs, that's another 45 supply that can be devoted to their army. Combine that with some of the most cost-efficient and supply-efficient units in the game and you get something that has many late-game implications.
The "but it's not the same!" arguments revolve around the basis that it actually is the same. For example, "Hey, that candy is just the same as that one!", "No, it's not the same!" repeat....
Anyway. Did you know that Zerg has to make more overlords for drones, and Protoss the same for pylons and probes? You see, the supply mechanic is actually fundamentally flawed in favor for Zerg, because of their macro mechanic. Lose 25 overlords to a nuke? Just re-make them instantly! Want to pop out of 150 cap food instantly? Just instantly smash V!
The build times between a supply depot and overlord are a 5 second difference. How is spamming 10 overlords any different from spamming 10 supply depots?
Your arguments are really flawed.
Terrans may lose the mining time of those SCVs, but Zergs lose the ability to produce drones and army with those larva. They have an equal trade off.
Edit: After reading your posts, I've come to the conclusion that you have no reading comprehension. Most likely, you are in the 16 year old range and just got promoted to platinum.
Sorry, the /150 is the gas cost. It's a bit confusing because I don't mention gas anywhere else.
And yeah, I understand that the point of the OP is about cutting out depots for the mid-late game. I just see a lot of bad economics in this thread and others like it, and wanted to show the correct way to calculate.
Another good example that you see floating around is the obviously silly claim--but not obvious to disprove--that the cost of one zerg building is infinite. The logic says, "You sacrifice a drone to build the building, and that drone could have theoretically mined forever. Thus the cost is infinite." But the correct calculation is actually 50 minerals plus whatever one drone can mine in the time it takes to produce another drone, which is only about 12 minerals. 62 is a lot less than infinity.
(For other math nerds: the return on constantly producing workers is a function in sum notation. I can post an image of it if anyone is weird enough to care.)
On December 04 2010 06:32 DeBurd wrote: Sorry, the /150 is the gas cost. It's a bit confusing because I don't mention gas anywhere else.
And yeah, I understand that the point of the OP is about cutting out depots for the mid-late game. I just see a lot of bad economics in this thread and others like it, and wanted to show the correct way to calculate.
Another good example that you see floating around is the obviously silly claim--but not obvious to disprove--that the cost of one zerg building is infinite. The logic says, "You sacrifice a drone to build the building, and that drone could have theoretically mined forever. Thus the cost is infinite." But the correct calculation is actually 50 minerals plus whatever one drone can mine in the time it takes to produce another drone, which is only about 12 minerals. 62 is a lot less than infinity.
(For other math nerds: the return on constantly producing workers is a function in sum notation. I can post an image of it if anyone is weird enough to care.)
I'm defiantly going to test this out now, I was getting a little board with zerg anyhow. This will give me a reason to play with terran. I think there is problably a happy medium in here somewhere for the early game to get scvs, maybe enough for a base and a half or something and then have orbital's and still be safe. Although a Orbital wall in would be funny.
The other thing i've been waiting for a long time is to see a thor drop with mules repairing, could you imagine the power that would have with this build? Since I don't play terran I could be wrong but don't mules repair 2x as fast as scvs along with having the ability to stack on top of each other? Think of the nerf hammer this may cause...
On December 04 2010 06:32 DeBurd wrote: (For other math nerds: the return on constantly producing workers is a function in sum notation. I can post an image of it if anyone is weird enough to care.)
I've actually been reviewing this in preparation for going back to school. Post please?
On December 04 2010 06:37 Ekko wrote: Since I don't play terran I could be wrong but don't mules repair 2x as fast as scvs along with having the ability to stack on top of each other?
On December 04 2010 06:10 DeBurd wrote: Sorry if this has already been said, I don't quite have time to read 16 pages of posts.
The idea is very cool and may be viable in any number of ways. But I have to make a note about the errors in the theory because I'm really sick of seeing incorrect economics applied to SC. Almost all the SC economics (especially re mules) that I see says, "If I spend x minerals now, and it results in >x minerals at some later point, then this is good!"
That is wrong. That assumes that your alternative is doing NOTHING with your x minerals. But doing nothing with your minerals is horrible. Just like a prospective investor calculates his profit over business interest, you have to calculate the return on your investment compared to the return of simply building workers steadily.
Example: An OC costs 550/150 to build and takes 155 seconds. Mules mine about 170 minerals per minute. Assuming one mule constantly (I know that's off by a few seconds), it's easy to do the math and say, "After 195 seconds, an OC will have paid itself off."
Wrong. After 195 seconds, an OC has paid itself off compared to doing NOTHING. But actually, if you had just steadily built workers, you would break even (including the cost of supply) only seconds later, and with greater ongoing income (8 SCVs > 1 mule). So an OC isn't per se a better investment than just building workers. It's just a better investment than doing nothing.
Obviously this doesn't account for island expos, saturation issues, 200-food encounters, etc. But that's why SC2 is a game and not a math problem.
This is only correct to the extent that you could have used those minerals to build more SCVs. Production capacity is always an issue as well. If you're a one or two base Terran you are limited in the number of scvs you can produce at any instant in time. In the early to mid game the choice isn't really going to be between the two forms of economic expansion as you'll likely be producing SCVs constantly in addition to producing the OC. You are balancing economic expansion vs military/tech expansion. Mule production is going to be in addition to your SCV production, not instead of it. The real power here seems to be the ability to expand economically without having to defend a larger footprint and of course the saved supply cost.
As you said, it is a game, not a math problem, but math can always help.
Just wanted to say that mules need a mineral patch to go to, and just like having more hatcheries or nexus, you invest in their potential. Again, there is no discussion here, other than, "Hey guys, Terran has a macro mechanic! Let's build more command centers!" It's the same as saying, "Hey guys Protoss can chrono-boost more probes, and with more nexus, have an incredible economy." Or, "Hey guys, Zerg can build more queens and hatcheries, and use spawn larvae to make more drones, and have an incredible economy!"
Discussion of unique benefits of the macro mechanic that haven't been fully explored is certainly discussion. Mules need a mineral patch, but unlike other workers they don't need a new mineral patch and they don't require supply. These are two benefits completely unique to the Terran macro mechanic. Discussion of how best to take advantage of a macro mechanic is certainly discussion suitable for a strategy forum.
The "but it's not the same!" arguments revolve around the basis that it actually is the same. For example, "Hey, that candy is just the same as that one!", "No, it's not the same!" repeat...
What?
"Terran macro mechanic isn't limited in this way - a Terran using their macro mechanic this way can have a minimal number of SCVs and a larger percentage of their supply in army." Almost as good as Zerg can!
Zerg can't have a larger percentage of their supply in army because they need drones for their economy. Are you suggesting that they could sack all their drones and then instantly rebuild after an attack? I don't understand your point.
The really revolutionary part of this massing OC's idea is that "you don't have to build scvs!" which I'm pretty sure has been disproven. I've tried this sort of style many times now and I can authoritatively say you will NEVER have enough orbital commands that you will not need a good number of scvs. In fact you probably will never even have enough that you can justify cutting any scv production, although they can keep you afloat in the event that one of your bases gets popped and you lose a base's worth of workers.
However the idea that an orbital command is such a strong asset that it's worth building at most stages of the game is quite true. Just use it to take a base and mine from it like normal, and mule whichever of your bases you feel is the most exposed, and put fewer scv's on that base.
From just skimming through this thread, I'm amused about how the idea started out with "rush for mass OCs and get few SCVs and supply depots" and evolved into "it probably doesn't hurt to get an additional OC or two in the mid to late game"
Anyway, props for a potentially revolutionary idea. I'm interested to see if a moderate approach actually finds its way into Terran's standard repertoire.
On December 04 2010 06:35 Stoids wrote: OC's don't cost gas.
Sorry, I'm dumb. I was thinking of PF. Obviously orbitals don't cost gas.
On December 04 2010 06:41 dahorns wrote: This is only correct to the extent that you could have used those minerals to build more SCVs. ... The choice isn't really going to be between the two forms of economic expansion as you'll likely be producing SCVs constantly in addition to producing the OC.
This is totally correct. I'm not saying it's always wrong to build OCs, obviously that would be ridiculous. I'm just generally trying to encourage mule theorycrafters to calculate returns minus the cost of constantly producing workers.
On December 04 2010 06:37 richter wrote: I've actually been reviewing this in preparation for going back to school. Post please?
Reveal the spoiler to see this. I don't want to clog the strat forum with math junk.
I'm at work so I can't upload the image but here's the idea. The return on constantly building workers for T seconds is everything they mine minus their total cost including supply. Equation below, with T for time and W for number of workers you've produced. Aka, W = T/17 rounded down to the nearest integer.
t SUM [(i-17).66] - 62.5(w) i=17
This has no perfect algebraic notation. However, if you're willing to substitute T/17 for W without rounding, you can get an algebraic equation (helpful for making graphs etc). Unfortunately it produces a funny effect where workers are paid for "gradually" while they build rather than in realistic chunks of 50. See equations below.
f(t) = (t-17)(t-18)(.66)/2 - 62.5(t/17)
f(t) =.33t^2 - 15.23t + 100.1
The numbers are rounded and so results will be off by a couple of minerals, but it's negligible. I can provide proofs for this and/or other tutoring help if that's what people want, but please PM me as this is no longer a SC discussion and I don't want to clog the forums.
that doesm't even mention the fact you can slap them anywhere on the map to really cause some chaos with siege tanks and an infantry ball. the splash is pretty lulzy.
On December 04 2010 06:32 DeBurd wrote: Another good example that you see floating around is the obviously silly claim--but not obvious to disprove--that the cost of one zerg building is infinite. The logic says, "You sacrifice a drone to build the building, and that drone could have theoretically mined forever. Thus the cost is infinite." But the correct calculation is actually 50 minerals plus whatever one drone can mine in the time it takes to produce another drone, which is only about 12 minerals. 62 is a lot less than infinity.
You're ignoring the opportunity cost of making the building. The reason the cost is not infinite is not that you can ignore the opportunity cost, it's that you need to discount future income (also that the drone can't mine forever due to limited minerals, but for a first approximation you could ignore that).
On December 04 2010 06:32 DeBurd wrote: Another good example that you see floating around is the obviously silly claim--but not obvious to disprove--that the cost of one zerg building is infinite. The logic says, "You sacrifice a drone to build the building, and that drone could have theoretically mined forever. Thus the cost is infinite." But the correct calculation is actually 50 minerals plus whatever one drone can mine in the time it takes to produce another drone, which is only about 12 minerals. 62 is a lot less than infinity.
What? While it may not be infinite, you would had been N+1 drones if you did not build a building and therefore the drone would continue to mine till the map was empty.
Can't you also get free supply depots from the OC's allowing you to gain another 100 minerals towards the initial 550 mineral investment? Talk about paying for itself...
The costs look very similar to those of SCVs when purely considering the supply and minerals but time is also important and the return on investment for a CC is far slower than that of an SCV. You also seem to have neglected the minerals an SCV could have mined if it weren't building a CC. An SCV pays for itself in something like a minute and 20 seconds after you purchase it whereas the orbital command takes far longer. If you consider the money based on time via typical interest calculations, it shows that orbitals commands are not nearly as profitable as SCVs and supply depots.
Naturally, your ability to build SCVs is tied directly to your number of CCs and supply-free mining is a pretty big deal when at the food cap so for those reasons it's a great idea to build more of them.
This seems like a logical way for terran to do a more econ oriented opening without the usual vulnerabilities of expansions, much the same way as zerg can devote all their production to drones but it doesn't seem like a replacement for constant SCV production or supply depots.
On December 04 2010 06:32 DeBurd wrote: (For other math nerds: the return on constantly producing workers is a function in sum notation. I can post an image of it if anyone is weird enough to care.)
I've actually been reviewing this in preparation for going back to school. Post please?
maybe you should derive it yourself then
edit:
This thread could REALLY REALLY use a FAQ section attached to the first post. Every 2-3 pages now just repeats what the previous 2-3 pages said, minus one or two posts.
What would be hilarious is floating several CC's to the enemy choke at midgame and PFing right outside their Natural.
I'm going to experiment with doing a Supply>CC>Enginering>PF opening as a means to block off your Ramp and beat back early pushes before going for the OC's.
On December 04 2010 09:56 Conrose wrote: What would be hilarious is floating several CC's to the enemy choke at midgame and PFing right outside their Natural.
I'm going to experiment with doing a Supply>CC>Enginering>PF opening as a means to block off your Ramp and beat back early pushes before going for the OC's.
You can't convert an OC into a PF, so what you're proposing is actually completely different from what's being discussed in this thread.
It is really about the fact that mules don't "share" mineral patches with scvs and you therefore can really power mine mineral patches and a mass huge army.
Lots of mules and scvs (which you should have with 3+ CC on two bases) really generates a big income.
EDIT:I also feel the title is missleading.
Mostly because when you need supply urgently you generally are massing army, and when you are doing that you can't wait for a command center to be build nor can you wait 3 minutes for the 400 mineral 11 supply building to pay it self back, when you need those minerals right NOW to make an army.
Rather it is about oversaturation, powering the income -> thus the army.
I honestly can't see this taking off. nice try though. When do you build the first 550 mineral command center? How many SCVs in total do you make? We need actual testing. I will attempt this in a game against the computer but I can't see it being stable.
On December 02 2010 17:31 Shikyo wrote: This sound like an awesome strategy if you center it around a gigantic ~20 worker, 180 supply army 200/200 attack off 2 bases when maxed. So you basically skip workers for almost everything but gas and spam mules and get an insanely powerful max and then attack, and while attacking you can triple expand or something.
So basically a great idea, I'd love to try this.
On December 02 2010 17:30 theherder2 wrote: I think that you're ignoring one of the essential timings to this, which is the time it takes to build a command center, especially your first one or two. Yes, the mules will pay for them later but you're leaving yourself a lot of timings in the early game when you are investing heavily in command centers to 1. get mules/workers 2. get supply. all those minerals could have gone to more barracks or more marines or both, so if a competent player sees this type of build, he can just rush you to death.
this is if you're cutting out all supply depots as said, so you're trying to build your first CC at 14 supply ish. Still this is me theorycrafting... so good luck with it!
Meh, you can just do 1rax cc normally and build one extra depot.
I think the advantage would max at around 12 minutes if its possible to get a ~3k income at 10 without getting killed. My first not shitty build had mined a total of 10,700 minerals at exactly 10 minutes, stopping CC production here and just spamming army/mule would mean around 16,000 minerals worth of crap at 12 minutes. That should honestly just be more than any other race can possibly handle.
I don't know..what are the odds you won't get rolled at all for 10 whole minutes....let alone 12.
this strategy is ONLY good if your attempting an allin. which nearly all terrans do every game these days so you got that goin for ya. but seriously your gonnna be a sad terran when your mined out of your main at the 8 minute mark and your zerg opponent is taking a third and preparing for a big allin push, that if held, is gg.
On December 02 2010 17:24 zeehar wrote: don't command centers build much too slowly to keep up with the ramped up unit production you're meant to enjoy with this income?
yes they build very slowly, its also hard to wallin with them.
On December 02 2010 17:31 Shikyo wrote: This sound like an awesome strategy if you center it around a gigantic ~20 worker, 180 supply army 200/200 attack off 2 bases when maxed. So you basically skip workers for almost everything but gas and spam mules and get an insanely powerful max and then attack, and while attacking you can triple expand or something.
So basically a great idea, I'd love to try this.
On December 02 2010 17:30 theherder2 wrote: I think that you're ignoring one of the essential timings to this, which is the time it takes to build a command center, especially your first one or two. Yes, the mules will pay for them later but you're leaving yourself a lot of timings in the early game when you are investing heavily in command centers to 1. get mules/workers 2. get supply. all those minerals could have gone to more barracks or more marines or both, so if a competent player sees this type of build, he can just rush you to death.
this is if you're cutting out all supply depots as said, so you're trying to build your first CC at 14 supply ish. Still this is me theorycrafting... so good luck with it!
Meh, you can just do 1rax cc normally and build one extra depot.
I think the advantage would max at around 12 minutes if its possible to get a ~3k income at 10 without getting killed. My first not shitty build had mined a total of 10,700 minerals at exactly 10 minutes, stopping CC production here and just spamming army/mule would mean around 16,000 minerals worth of crap at 12 minutes. That should honestly just be more than any other race can possibly handle.
I don't know..what are the odds you won't get rolled at all for 10 whole minutes....let alone 12.
16 k worth of what? are you teching at all or just making pure marine?
So wait, let me get this straight. Your idea is to turtle in your main and build lots of Orbitals?.....
As a Zerg I fully support this idea, please give me the map so I can make a hatchery at every single expansion.
Honestly this is a terrible idea, I thought of this a while ago and yes it is cool but I deemed it not viable since to be able to hold off an attack you'd need PFs and Turrets, which means you're turtling in your base, which means the other player can just take the map.
1 base+mules < 3 bases saturated
Where do you even fit all your production buildings if you're making so many Orbitals and PFs on ONE base?
This might work in lower brackets where people don't just go "Oh hey, he gave me the map EXPAND!!!!", but in Diamond (or at least I know I've done this) when someone gives you the map and aren't massing a death ball, you get so far ahead it's ridiculous. So moral of the story is Turtling = Bad (unless it's to mass a death ball, even then not optimal but it's sometimes your only choice).
On December 03 2010 01:41 Sm3agol wrote: Some of you people need to....ummmmmm, wake up? All you people bashing it are bashing it off of a pure no supply depot, no SCV build conception. If you mix it in gently with a more normal turtlish T build, I think it will do just fine. Obviously this is all still theory-crafting, but I think the concept has massive potential. Just do a more or less standard build, work in another CC or two into a normal build, turtle a bit more than usual, then when you get your massive mineral pile going start massing CCs, rax, marines, hellion, whatever eats through your minerals. Just because you have a crap ton of minerals doesn't mean you won't have any scvs mining gas or w/e. You'll just have a mega-ton of minerals. Build about 10 reactored rax mid-game, and start suiciding groups of 30 marines at his base every minute or so while your more normal army gets up to strength. Sure it might not ever be a completely viable standard build, but if you play someone that you've played before in ladder and know he doesn't push early, or goes tech heavy, try it out. Marines are so ridiculously useful that your basically never going to be just "suiciding" them unless you're intentionally doing so.
Imagine having a typical TvX late macro game, only instead of 60 SCVs, and a 140 supply army, you have 18 SCVs on gas, 4-8 constantly building random buildings and random groups of 30 hellions/marines to do whatever the fark you want with while you still have your normal supply army out battling. And you don't care what happens to that 30 supply group, because you have more minerals than you can possibly use.
Now imagine a 2 v 2 ZT vs XX, where your teamate, the T, leaves, you go mass CC with his units while still building normal Z army. Also build an inbase hatch or three in every normal expo and extra queens so you can send a constant stream of zerglings off 9 hatcheries to your opponents base, lol. Imagine 300 strong army of zerglings popping out of your base every 30 seconds, lol.
/theory crafting
All-in-all, I don't see this being the end of supply depots or anything else drastic, but I definitely do see T late games transforming into mass CC/planetary to eat up minerals and free up supply.
i think the reason people are bashing it is because its just another fucked up way to allin as terran. also it would never fucking work against a decent zerg or toss. toss would just 4 gate and go fucking kill em and zerg only has to defend a push and then the terran is left on ONE mined out base. 0 minerals even with mules. now ill admit many zergs would probably die to the allin but if they dont suck and realize that all they have to do to win is hold off one push then ez pz.
On December 03 2010 01:41 Sm3agol wrote: Some of you people need to....ummmmmm, wake up? All you people bashing it are bashing it off of a pure no supply depot, no SCV build conception. If you mix it in gently with a more normal turtlish T build, I think it will do just fine. Obviously this is all still theory-crafting, but I think the concept has massive potential. Just do a more or less standard build, work in another CC or two into a normal build, turtle a bit more than usual, then when you get your massive mineral pile going start massing CCs, rax, marines, hellion, whatever eats through your minerals. Just because you have a crap ton of minerals doesn't mean you won't have any scvs mining gas or w/e. You'll just have a mega-ton of minerals. Build about 10 reactored rax mid-game, and start suiciding groups of 30 marines at his base every minute or so while your more normal army gets up to strength. Sure it might not ever be a completely viable standard build, but if you play someone that you've played before in ladder and know he doesn't push early, or goes tech heavy, try it out. Marines are so ridiculously useful that your basically never going to be just "suiciding" them unless you're intentionally doing so.
Imagine having a typical TvX late macro game, only instead of 60 SCVs, and a 140 supply army, you have 18 SCVs on gas, 4-8 constantly building random buildings and random groups of 30 hellions/marines to do whatever the fark you want with while you still have your normal supply army out battling. And you don't care what happens to that 30 supply group, because you have more minerals than you can possibly use.
Now imagine a 2 v 2 ZT vs XX, where your teamate, the T, leaves, you go mass CC with his units while still building normal Z army. Also build an inbase hatch or three in every normal expo and extra queens so you can send a constant stream of zerglings off 9 hatcheries to your opponents base, lol. Imagine 300 strong army of zerglings popping out of your base every 30 seconds, lol.
/theory crafting
All-in-all, I don't see this being the end of supply depots or anything else drastic, but I definitely do see T late games transforming into mass CC/planetary to eat up minerals and free up supply.
i think the reason people are bashing it is because its just another fucked up way to allin as terran.
also it would never fucking work against a decent zerg or toss. toss would just 4 gate and go fucking kill em and zerg only has to defend a push and then the terran is left on ONE mined out base. 0 minerals even with mules.
third reason is because its all theory craft. even the garbage you spouted out about having a terran go mass cc and you stream a constant 300 army of lings is theory craft and it just wouldnt work. lings arnt even that good. you cant have a 300 army of them and even if you did a 50 supply army of hellions would rape them to pieces. people talk about mules like they are free money when in reality they are just fast money. they dont actually grant you anything extra just let you get whats already yours faster.
fourth your trying to hard to play terran like zerg. expanding a ton on the same 8 patch mineral line.
On December 04 2010 09:56 Conrose wrote: What would be hilarious is floating several CC's to the enemy choke at midgame and PFing right outside their Natural.
I'm going to experiment with doing a Supply>CC>Enginering>PF opening as a means to block off your Ramp and beat back early pushes before going for the OC's.
You can't convert an OC into a PF, so what you're proposing is actually completely different from what's being discussed in this thread.
Read it again, I said "CC", not "OC" when talking about floating into enemy chokes.
Anyways, I was able to wall off with a Rax, CC and starting the Engineering Bay at 3:45, but I was putting out the SCV's pretty heavily at the beginning. The PF was finished at 6:01.
I'm only bronze level so I'm certain a better player could pull the start off faster.
Mistakes that made it easier for you, thus making this strat not suck enormously.
Zerg went Hatch first against Two Barracks. Zerg used all his larvae on drones and had none, 0, when his Spawning Pool finished. Zerg made a banelings nest and more drones instead of Zerglings, even AFTER he saw you were pushing out. Zerg had an overlord in front of his natural. Zerg let you kill his main base queen (no creep between main and natural). Zerg tried to do a bling+ling bust and failed, he then made 12 drones with all his larvae, except 1. Zerg doesn't have Zergling speed (got it at 16:01!) and only got Baneling speed 14:06 minutes into the game. Zerg knew you were on two base and took a third really late. Zerg let your factory sit at his front and kept his entire army there visible to it (wtf?! lol). Zerg had no map knowledge. Zerg had a third building when yours had just landed. Zerg never changed his strategy, it was BANELING+LING BUST!!! into BANELING+ROACH BUST!!!! into SAME ONE AS BEFORE!!!! Zerg sucked extremely hard.
It really makes me sad that Amok is ranked 12 in his Diamond league.
The second replay.
What's with your marine spreading? You're making it so Zerg doesn't have to fight a bioball, which makes it extremely easy for them. The point of splitting is to let a few marines die while the rest kill banelings before they get close enough to hurt them. Pretty much if you're not killing the banelings and just letting them explode on single marines than the Zerglings become the thing that are very cost effective against pure marine. So spreading that much becomes moot. Just saying.
Zerg had no creep between his main and natural till 11 minutes into the game (not huge, but both spine crawlers could've been at the front choke instead of at separate bases, add to that if you got a Banshee his other Queen would have never made it in time). Zerg built two spine crawlers for no apparent reason (spine crawlers build in 50 seconds, it took you from the time you left your base at 6:06 till 7:05 to be at the zergs ramp). Zerg went Spire without having any idea what you were doing besides the one built barracks and the second building barracks he scouted in the beginning. Zerg didn't scout as often as he should have, he had overlords in place but didn't use them, nor did he ever research overlord speed. Zerg had his third at the gold finish at 11:30 and only started using it at 13:25, but he never transfered he just built a few drones, the base never was even at 16 drones the entire game.Add to that he used two of the three drones to make extractors that he never used. Zerg rallied up units to his main/natural choke in plain sight of you making it obvious he had a third. Zerg was behind or barely ahead in workers (only by a few) the entire game. At the end of the game he had 37 to your 59. Zerg let you kill 5 mutalisks that were just afking in your base. Zerg had only one unit upgrade (armor/weapon) which was for Muta air attack against your Marine only army...... *sighs*. Zerg had 2825 minerals and 1110 gas at 16:50 into the game, let's just go with his mechanics suck.
This Zerg is ranked 28th in his Diamond League.
Pretty much you're winning these because you're better than they are. The build in my opinion is very bad and has too much investment at too large an amount before actually benefiting you, meaning you're behind till a bit after it starts benefiting you.
I think a lot of you are missing the point - don't take this as "spawn...make rax, make orbitals, win game". Thats not whats important. What is important is the idea that at certain safe timings, you could add extra OCs (after destroying enemy army when you'd normally expand?) and get a larger advantage.
Very interested to see what top level players can do with this idea.
I've found that 4 Thorship Cannons more or less insta-kills Hatcheries while 2 Instakills most zerg tech buildings, think that could be incorporated into this build?
I think there is something else very revolutionary that should be considered.
having 4 orbitals on a single base might be extreme if you cannot hold onto an expansion quickly, but! If you want to save minerals and delay expanding, then why not use supply drop? Unlike a MULE which lets you simply extract minerals faster, supply drops immediately save you 100 minerals. In the early game, Mules are simply too valuable to spend money on supply drops, but when you hit a point in time where you are worried that you won't be able to expand, making mules actually makes your economy worse since you basically cause your scvs to stop mining. The goal of an economy is to always be using your investments in the most productive way possible and so while making mules to mine out faster might be good for short term gain, it might hurt more in the long run.
Therefore, make 1 orbital whole entire purpose is to drop supply on existing supply depots. Doing a supply drop on a single orbital every time it's up allows you to 1. Worry less about supply, and when supply is less of an issue, allows you to make more orbitals. 2. Provide you with a more productive economy. Even though you won't get minerals as fast, you will use your minerals more efficiently and will be able to mine from your bases for a longer time. 3. Provides flexibility when macroing. If you are planning on 1 basing or 2 basing with orbitals, eventually you will have to expand, but this is not always doable. Supply drop is basically free supply at this point.
This is also theorycrafting, but someone else should look into the math behind this and see if there is a way of mixing making orbitals for supply and orbitals for supply drop in order to maximize your economy.
So maybe 5 orbitals on 2 base (55 supply) + 9 depots with drops (144 supply) might be an efficient way of doing things (the 3 extra orbitals cost like 1100 minerals adjusted for supply, etc and the 9 drops essentially save you 900 minerals).
Kennigit is right, but I would change what he says slightly.
An orbital command is not predetermined as being either in-base, or an expand. It can move, and generates energy even while lifted off. This means that you can leave the orbital in your base until it is safe to use it to claim a base, and then start building another command center. In the event that the base is not safe, lift off and either head home or go to a different base.
Units like void rays and mutalisks can put a real cramp in this style, however, since your orbital command is much too slow to escape, and there are no terran units that can effectively cross the entire map to save the orbital command in time. Not even vikings, and those aren't even effective against those types of units. You're going to need scv's for turrets. I've found that you can send an scv to a base both to scout that it is empty and also to build a couple missile turrets as the orbital command is en route.
On December 04 2010 11:25 Kennigit wrote: I think a lot of you are missing the point - don't take this as "spawn...make rax, make orbitals, win game". Thats not whats important. What is important is the idea that at certain safe timings, you could add extra OCs (after destroying enemy army when you'd normally expand?) and get a larger advantage.
Very interested to see what top level players can do with this idea.
The big issue I see is that the faster you mine out the faster you're spread out across the map, which means the easier you are to take potshots at.
The only way I can see this working is if you do a timing push. The way I see it is, when you get small advantages that won't secure an expansion but definitely put you a little bit ahead, build an Orbital, use the extra orbitals sparingly and only to get a bit extra income to build production facilities that you'll use once the orbitals reach 200/200 energy and you drop 8 mules from the two (shouldn't be too hard to squeeze out two orbitals if you get two small advantages). Once you drop the 8 mules and the income kicks in use it to build from those extra production facilities you didn't have the income to use and do a timing push while floating your two orbitals to two expansions and building/transfers workers.
I seriously doubt we'll see Pros do this since they take the little advantages here and there and play safe and let those little advantages they get stack up until they can secure an expansion at which point they have enough workers to xfer and some what saturate.
It is a cool idea, not denying that, just don't see it being viable.
On December 03 2010 14:58 Sanasante wrote: Hopefully blizzard will use this as a reason to fix mules
Eh... to all the nerf bat fans. The fact that this build has severe flaws in the early game and other two races have similar capacity, such as Zerg early FE saturation. Edit: This build is imho, balanced due to the above weaknesses.
This is a high risk economic move such as Zerg early hatch + saturation.
Once properly set up, a Zerg player could literally pump waves of 200/200 speedlings/banelings with litte down time.
1v1 TvZ a better replay, the zerg(me) could have gotten better tech units rather tahn mutas. probably infestors. shows how fast a terran can produce and waves of waves of attacks. I could've micro'd better as well. http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/112219-1v1-terran-zerg-metalopolis
Please note that we knew what the terran was doing, and try'd things to stop it. We did not have any rules just the Z or P trying to stop it.
Mistakes that made it easier for you, thus making this strat not suck enormously.
Zerg went Hatch first against Two Barracks. Zerg used all his larvae on drones and had none, 0, when his Spawning Pool finished. Zerg made a banelings nest and more drones instead of Zerglings, even AFTER he saw you were pushing out. Zerg had an overlord in front of his natural. Zerg let you kill his main base queen (no creep between main and natural). Zerg tried to do a bling+ling bust and failed, he then made 12 drones with all his larvae, except 1. Zerg doesn't have Zergling speed (got it at 16:01!) and only got Baneling speed 14:06 minutes into the game. Zerg knew you were on two base and never took a third. Zerg let your factory sit at his front and kept his entire there visible to it (wtf?! lol). Zerg had no map knowledge. Zerg had a third building when yours done and had just landed. Zerg never changed his strategy, it was BANELING+LING BUST!!! into BANELING+ROACH BUST!!!! into SAME ONE AS BEFORE!!!! Zerg sucked extremely hard.
It really makes me sad that Amok is ranked 12 in his Diamond league.
The second replay.
What's with your marine spreading? You're making it so Zerg doesn't have to fight a bioball, which makes it extremely easy for them. The point of splitting is to let a few marines die while the rest kill banelings before they get close enough to hurt them. Pretty much if you're not killing the banelings and just letting them explode on single marines than the Zerglings become the thing that are very cost effective against pure marine. So spreading that much becomes moot. Just saying.
Zerg had no creep between his main and natural till 11 minutes into the game (not huge, but both spine crawlers could've been at the front choke instead of at separate bases, add to that if you got a Banshee his other Queen would have never made it in time). Zerg built two spine crawlers for no apparent reason (spine crawlers build in 50 seconds, it took you from the time you left your base at 6:06 till 7:05 to be at the zergs ramp). Zerg went Spire without having any idea what you were doing besides the one built barracks and the second building barracks he scouted in the beginning. Zerg didn't scout as often as he should have, he had overlords in place but didn't use them, nor did he ever research overlord speed. Zerg had his third at the gold finish at 11:30 and only started using it at 13:25, but he never transfered he just built a few drones, the base never was even at 16 drones the entire game.Add to that he used two of the three drones to make extractors that he never used. Zerg rallied up units to his main/natural choke in plain sight of you making it obvious he had a third. Zerg was behind or barely ahead in workers (only by a few) the entire game. At the end of the game he had 37 to your 59. Zerg let you kill 5 mutalisks that were just afking in your base. Zerg had only one unit upgrade (armor/weapon) which was for Muta air attack against your Marine only army...... *sighs*. Zerg had 2825 minerals and 1110 gas at 16:50 into the game, let's just go with his mechanics suck.
This Zerg is ranked 28th in his Diamond League.
Pretty much you're winning these because you're better than they are. The build in my opinion is very bad and has too much investment at too large an amount before actually benefiting you, meaning you're behind till a bit after it starts benefiting you.
WOW
Let me start be saying I really appreciate your feedback!
Generally I feel you are saying my opponents are worst then what I feel they really are. I mean they are diamond right? :D
Alot of your comments are plagued with hindsight (I mean seriously when have you ever played perfectly even without pressure) and some I simply can't tell are right or not (like pumping drones after half failed baneling bust?)
I would write more, but it is 4:20 AM here.
Personally I am not sure if it is IT!! But I feel these two early command centers really gives and advantage if you survive into mid game, which really shouldn't be that hard.
Either way further testing will be needed.
EDIT: I might try the strat on my main account, to get some 2300+ action
Mistakes that made it easier for you, thus making this strat not suck enormously.
Zerg went Hatch first against Two Barracks. Zerg used all his larvae on drones and had none, 0, when his Spawning Pool finished. Zerg made a banelings nest and more drones instead of Zerglings, even AFTER he saw you were pushing out. Zerg had an overlord in front of his natural. Zerg let you kill his main base queen (no creep between main and natural). Zerg tried to do a bling+ling bust and failed, he then made 12 drones with all his larvae, except 1. Zerg doesn't have Zergling speed (got it at 16:01!) and only got Baneling speed 14:06 minutes into the game. Zerg knew you were on two base and never took a third. Zerg let your factory sit at his front and kept his entire there visible to it (wtf?! lol). Zerg had no map knowledge. Zerg had a third building when yours done and had just landed. Zerg never changed his strategy, it was BANELING+LING BUST!!! into BANELING+ROACH BUST!!!! into SAME ONE AS BEFORE!!!! Zerg sucked extremely hard.
It really makes me sad that Amok is ranked 12 in his Diamond league.
The second replay.
What's with your marine spreading? You're making it so Zerg doesn't have to fight a bioball, which makes it extremely easy for them. The point of splitting is to let a few marines die while the rest kill banelings before they get close enough to hurt them. Pretty much if you're not killing the banelings and just letting them explode on single marines than the Zerglings become the thing that are very cost effective against pure marine. So spreading that much becomes moot. Just saying.
Zerg had no creep between his main and natural till 11 minutes into the game (not huge, but both spine crawlers could've been at the front choke instead of at separate bases, add to that if you got a Banshee his other Queen would have never made it in time). Zerg built two spine crawlers for no apparent reason (spine crawlers build in 50 seconds, it took you from the time you left your base at 6:06 till 7:05 to be at the zergs ramp). Zerg went Spire without having any idea what you were doing besides the one built barracks and the second building barracks he scouted in the beginning. Zerg didn't scout as often as he should have, he had overlords in place but didn't use them, nor did he ever research overlord speed. Zerg had his third at the gold finish at 11:30 and only started using it at 13:25, but he never transfered he just built a few drones, the base never was even at 16 drones the entire game.Add to that he used two of the three drones to make extractors that he never used. Zerg rallied up units to his main/natural choke in plain sight of you making it obvious he had a third. Zerg was behind or barely ahead in workers (only by a few) the entire game. At the end of the game he had 37 to your 59. Zerg let you kill 5 mutalisks that were just afking in your base. Zerg had only one unit upgrade (armor/weapon) which was for Muta air attack against your Marine only army...... *sighs*. Zerg had 2825 minerals and 1110 gas at 16:50 into the game, let's just go with his mechanics suck.
This Zerg is ranked 28th in his Diamond League.
Pretty much you're winning these because you're better than they are. The build in my opinion is very bad and has too much investment at too large an amount before actually benefiting you, meaning you're behind till a bit after it starts benefiting you.
WOW
Let me start be saying I really appreciate your feedback!
Generally I feel you are saying my opponents are worst then what I feel they really are. I mean they are diamond right? :D
Alot of your comments are plagued with hindsight (I mean seriously when have you ever played perfectly even without pressure) and some I simply can't tell are right or not (like pumping drones after half failed baneling bust?)
I would write more, but it is 4:20 AM here.
Personally I am not sure if it is IT!! But I feel these two early command centers really gives and advantage if you survive into mid game, which really shouldn't be that hard.
Either way further testing will be needed.
Haha, no problem.
Yeah, but Diamond doesn't mean anything anymore really, with the amount of people playing SC2 Diamond now just means you're better than everyone below Diamond, but since everyone below Diamond are freaking terrible that means you don't have to be that amazing to get into Diamond or even get high in Diamond. Now I'm not trying to insult anyone, just saying that the ladder is flooded and so the actual good players are spread usually pretty thin between the Diamond leagues meaning the majority of Diamond players aren't that great. As can be seen by many replays of Diamond players or playing them yourself.
None of the things I pointed out were little mistakes, those are some pretty massive mistakes. Now I do agree I have played games where I had mistakes, but the times I had big mistakes were when I hadn't played in a long time (one gay every two weeks etc.) and I was just rusty or if I just had a brain fart for some reason etc. So, I get one or two big mistakes in the case of being rusty or just doing drrrrr for a second, but this many is just poor play.
Lol, no problem man get some sleep.
The issue I see is by getting two early command centers that turn into orbitals you're spending 1100 minerals on something that won't give a benefit for a few minutes, meaning you're giving the other opponent an advantage.
See my reply to the TL Admin (forget name), I mentioned the only way I can see it being viable.
The big issue I see is that the faster you mine out the faster you're spread out across the map, which means the easier you are to take potshots at.
The only way I can see this working is if you do a timing push. The way I see it is, when you get small advantages that won't secure an expansion but definitely put you a little bit ahead, build an Orbital, use the extra orbitals sparingly and only to get a bit extra income to build production facilities that you'll use once the orbitals reach 200/200 energy and you drop 8 mules from the two (shouldn't be too hard to squeeze out two orbitals if you get two small advantages). Once you drop the 8 mules and the income kicks in use it to build from those extra production facilities you didn't have the income to use and do a timing push while floating your two orbitals to two expansions and building/transfers workers.
I seriously doubt we'll see Pros do this since they take the little advantages here and there and play safe and let those little advantages they get stack up until they can secure an expansion at which point they have enough workers to xfer and some what saturate.
It is a cool idea, not denying that, just don't see it being viable.
It may not be viable to go "omg OC spam" but any time you know you're safe for a while but can't/don't choose to attack, you could throw one down. Or when you let your macro slip badly and have 1k minerals, may as well throw down an OC + 3 rax instead of 5 rax or smth
This build is utterly HILARIOUS in team games. Quadrupling the resource score of the next highest player? Yes please. 20 barracks constantly producing? Yes please.
hi 301to1, could you please include this (edit it as you see proper xd) in your OP in order to avoid trolls and plain dumb comments:
FAQ
1. Please summarize what is this strategy/build all about? (Over the duration of this thread, this strategy has evolve a bit thanks to those willing to spend time and energy to try it out and prove/disprove it.) At this point, this build is about going standard early game as you see fit, and after that switching to mass OC for supply and mules and inevst in a mule heavy economy to support your army. With mass mules, you can sacrifice some of your scvs in order to get to an army heavy max 200/200 (some say 180/20) scenario
2. Do you mean i DO NOT have to build depots AT ALL? The idea of this strategy is to reduce dependence on depots as food supply and instead get it from OCs, especially mid-late game.
3. So you just build the initial depot and spam OC all the way? That was one of the initial ideas. But early tests indicate that you need standard depot build early game for the following reasons: - at 400m and longer build time, OCs are not optimal early game - you need early game depots to support first batch of scvs and early army
By midgame, or once you have a stable economy and decent army, you can SWITCH to this "build" by forgetting about depots and spamming OCs for mules (see details above for the figures on mule-heavy economy).
4. What about scvs? You will still need scvs particularly early game (per standard) until it is safe to switch to mule-based economy. At this point, you will need less scvs, mainly for gas harvest, repair, and building. Reducing scvs is an essential part of this strategy since it will give you a bigger percentage of army in a 200/200 max out scenario vs others.
5. What are the weaknesses of this strategy? If you proceed with your game rushing to this strategy, you will clearly have to skimp on early army. An opponent who scouts this might react to this aggressively with early pressure or might all-in against you. this could be a major problem. Or, you could simply go standard early to mid game, 2 basing preferably, and switch to this strategy, then you could see the potential of this strategy. Moreover, some point that mules only address the mineral aspect of your economy, what about the gas? I see this a general economy issue and not particular to this strategy - meaning mule or not, terran or any other race, one has to always mind gas harvesting. you will have to save some scvs for gas mining.
6. Do you have replays to prove it? At this point, this strategy belongs to everyone, including you. If you think this is impossible, you are welcome ignore this. But IF you argue against it, please be kind enough to post a rational argument and not just a blanket denial. Otherwise, try it out yourself, experiment with it, mix it up, do anything to prove by your account if this build is viable or not. By then, you can post any argument you want with the benefit of personal experience.
This is interesting, but I think-- at least the OP which I've read-- seems to misunderstand some fundamental game concepts. A CC costs 400 minerals. There is no other "actual" cost or "theoretical" cost. That's how much it costs. You don't pay for things using money you're *going* to have. No matter how you slice it, a 400 mineral investment early in the game is a huge risk, even if it may pay off in ways people may have not foreseen. I shouldn't have to tell anybody here that...
Side note, also: This isn't really new. There were threads discussing this exact thing early in the beta. Around February-March I think it was. Not having the beta It never really panned out, but then again the ladder wasn't flooded with people who would let you pull this kind of stuff back then. >,>
On December 04 2010 11:25 Kennigit wrote: I think a lot of you are missing the point - don't take this as "spawn...make rax, make orbitals, win game". Thats not whats important. What is important is the idea that at certain safe timings, you could add extra OCs (after destroying enemy army when you'd normally expand?) and get a larger advantage.
Very interested to see what top level players can do with this idea.
The big issue I see is that the faster you mine out the faster you're spread out across the map, which means the easier you are to take potshots at.
1) If you've mined out your main and your expansion 5 minutes faster than your opponent, you should already have a significant advantage.
2) The real beauty of this idea is that you really never need more than 1 or 2 bases actually mining. Mules can functionally simulate the income from a third or fourth base. In the mid/early late game you have all the advantages of 3 base play (at least in terms of minerals) without the downside of actually expanding. Later in the game you may have to take farther away expansions, but you can still limit the # of bases you must to defend to your main and whatever expansion you are currently mining.
The only way I can see this working is if you do a timing push. The way I see it is, when you get small advantages that won't secure an expansion but definitely put you a little bit ahead, build an Orbital, use the extra orbitals sparingly and only to get a bit extra income to build production facilities that you'll use once the orbitals reach 200/200 energy and you drop 8 mules from the two (shouldn't be too hard to squeeze out two orbitals if you get two small advantages). Once you drop the 8 mules and the income kicks in use it to build from those extra production facilities you didn't have the income to use and do a timing push while floating your two orbitals to two expansions and building/transfers workers.
There really isn't any reason to not be continuously mining with your mules. Even if you can't spend all the minerals you mine right away, you'll at least have them in the bank for future use. Waiting just gives your opponent more time to deny your access to the minerals. Once you have them, they are yours to spend or not spend as you please.
Think about it this way. If given the chance to start a game with all the minerals from your main immediately available to spend at the start of the game, but having no actual mineral fields in your main, would you do it? (The answer is yes). Do you really care that your opponent's income rate is going to be higher than yours?
I seriously doubt we'll see Pros do this since they take the little advantages here and there and play safe and let those little advantages they get stack up until they can secure an expansion at which point they have enough workers to xfer and some what saturate.
It is a cool idea, not denying that, just don't see it being viable.
Adding the random OC here and there seems like it would be one of those little advantages that would add up.
I didn't read the whole thread so I don't know if this has been done, but here's a comparison of OC vs SCVs:
-OC gives a mule every 90s, and 1 mule = 270 minerals, so OC = 180 minerals/minute -An scv that gets his very own mineral patch mines at ~42.2 minerals/minute -An scv mining at a saturated base (3 scvs/mineral patch) mines at ~32.65 minerals/minute
-OC takes 135s total to complete, 100s of which is CC building time which is lost mining time ...-100s mining time at a saturated base is ~55 minerals ...-OC provides 11 supply, which if valued at 12.5 minerals/supply (the cost given by supply depots), means 137.5 in mineral value ...-So the total cost of an OC is 550+55-137.5 = 467.5 minerals, and then the OC starts producing 180minerals/minute immediately ...-for interest's sake, from the time you start building a CC to the time you've earned your money back, including lost mining time and the value of supply from the OC, it takes ~291s, nearly 5 minutes
-it takes somewhere between 4.3 and 5.5 scvs to mine 180minerals/minute, depending on saturation. We'll use 5 to simplify things. ...-5 scvs, including cost of supply, costs 62.5*5=312.5 ...-5 scvs takes 5*17s=85s to build, and in that time, assuming 36 minerals/minute (approaching saturation), the first 4 scvs to be built will have mined ~102minerals. After 85s have passed the SCVs will have reached 180minerals/minute. ...-135s (time to make an OC) after starting the first SCV, those 5 SCVs will have mined ~252 minerals ...-to be precise, 5 scvs is 5/8 of a supply depot, and a supply depot takes 30s to be built, meaning 36minerals*5/8*0.5=11.25 minerals in lost mining time for the SCV that makes the depot to support them ...-so the cost of 5 scvs, after 135s, is 312.5-252+11.25=71.75minerals ...-and of course, after 135s have passed, OC=5scvs and that's that. Assuming you keep acquiring new bases to provide fresh mineral patches for your SCVs
SO: over the course of 135s, which is the time to make an OC -An OC costs an effective 467.5 minerals -5scvs costs an effective 71.75 minerals
and after that the two are the exact same as far as mining goes, assuming you keep expanding to prevent oversaturation.
Of course, as we all know, it's pretty hard to expand fast enough to keep up with saturation, so the OC is the clear choice when you're fully saturated and can't defend an extra base.
Other advantages of OC: - Saves you 5 supply worth of SCVs, allowing you a larger max army. - The OC builds SCVs, and lands at bases to facilitate mining - The OC can be used to make super-depots, and can provide scans (although these two are at the price of not using mules). - The OC can allow stripmining, meaning that if you save energy, hold a base for a couple minutes, and mule the shit out of it, you can move on and don't have to defend the location any more. Not always a consideration, but can sometimes be a huge advantage. - The OC can be used to make a floatable wall. Meh, who cares really, but it's something. - OCs are harder to kill than SCVs (but individual mules are still easy to snipe) -As stated, the OC doesn't care about oversaturation
Other advantages of SCVs: -They build stuff -They can scout -They can fight a little bit -They can repair (so can MULEs, but who wants to waste those on repairing) -They can mine gas (so you MUST keep at least a few SCVs) -The first SCV can be built at 50 minerals, rather than waiting for a 400 mineral surplus to start the CC -SCVs don't take up ridiculous amounts of space (heh...)
All this is when you're considering building SCVs OR building an OC. If you wish, you may build both at the same time, which is a quirky emulation of zerg's ability to mass drones or protoss's ability to chrono boost probes.
After making this lengthy post and considering what it means, here is what I've concluded:
-SCVs >>> Orbital commands in the early game, and it's not even close.
-When you are saturated, you should build stop building SCVs and make an OC every few minutes instead. Once you're able to expand, continue SCV production at an accelerated rate thanks to your new OCs craking out both money & SCVs.
-Any time you're confident you can hold a new base and don't already have an OC to go there, you should probably start CC production ASAP, even if it means you need to cut SCVs for a bit. New bases are awesome, and OCs are awesome. EZ game.
-Once the strategic advantages of the OC start to outweigh the price advantages of SCVs (IE, the mid-late game), you should definitely stop SCV production completely, building OCs instead. I'd probably aim for 50-60 SCVs in the midgame, then use some of them in an attack after maxing out, and eventually keep around 30 in the endgame for gas mining, repairing, and structure-building.
Played against someone going mass orbital commands. You'd notice that even though I was always ahead in workers by at least 8. His income is always higher than mine except at the end game.
Problem was the map really, jungle basin is not best map for this since expansion besides the natural are limited.
On December 04 2010 11:25 Kennigit wrote: I think a lot of you are missing the point - don't take this as "spawn...make rax, make orbitals, win game". Thats not whats important. What is important is the idea that at certain safe timings, you could add extra OCs (after destroying enemy army when you'd normally expand?) and get a larger advantage.
Very interested to see what top level players can do with this idea.
The big issue I see is that the faster you mine out the faster you're spread out across the map, which means the easier you are to take potshots at.
1) If you've mined out your main and your expansion 5 minutes faster than your opponent, you should already have a significant advantage.
2) The real beauty of this idea is that you really never need more than 1 or 2 bases actually mining. Mules can functionally simulate the income from a third or fourth base. In the mid/early late game you have all the advantages of 3 base play (at least in terms of minerals) without the downside of actually expanding. Later in the game you may have to take farther away expansions, but you can still limit the # of bases you must to defend to your main and whatever expansion you are currently mining.
The only way I can see this working is if you do a timing push. The way I see it is, when you get small advantages that won't secure an expansion but definitely put you a little bit ahead, build an Orbital, use the extra orbitals sparingly and only to get a bit extra income to build production facilities that you'll use once the orbitals reach 200/200 energy and you drop 8 mules from the two (shouldn't be too hard to squeeze out two orbitals if you get two small advantages). Once you drop the 8 mules and the income kicks in use it to build from those extra production facilities you didn't have the income to use and do a timing push while floating your two orbitals to two expansions and building/transfers workers.
There really isn't any reason to not be continuously mining with your mules. Even if you can't spend all the minerals you mine right away, you'll at least have them in the bank for future use. Waiting just gives your opponent more time to deny your access to the minerals. Once you have them, they are yours to spend or not spend as you please.
Think about it this way. If given the chance to start a game with all the minerals from your main immediately available to spend at the start of the game, but having no actual mineral fields in your main, would you do it? (The answer is yes). Do you really care that your opponent's income rate is going to be higher than yours?
I seriously doubt we'll see Pros do this since they take the little advantages here and there and play safe and let those little advantages they get stack up until they can secure an expansion at which point they have enough workers to xfer and some what saturate.
It is a cool idea, not denying that, just don't see it being viable.
Adding the random OC here and there seems like it would be one of those little advantages that would add up.
Someone who is three basing compared to someone who is two basing but with lots of mules will have the better options. Minerals are for the base low tier of your army, if a Protoss gets a few Colossi and or Templars with Storm than your mass marines due to your muling will be evaporated and it won't matter that you have the extra mineral income, he has the extra gas income which is what has the biggest impact once you reach mid game.
Either way though, being mined out faster than your opponent does mean you have higher mineral income which means more baseline units. But the issue is like I already said, if the person doesn't die to your extra mineral income than you'll be more spread out quicker than he will be. Add on to that if you're not muling correctly (putting one mule on each node before allowing a node to get a second mule) you'll mine out a node faster than the rest and your income will take a hit.
You just said exactly the issue I see in this strat, if you're defending let's say your fourth and your main, your fourth will be quite far away from your main and vice versa. How do you propose to hold off a full on attack at your main when you have your army split between your main and fourth? As well as how do you plan on being aggressive once you're spread out that much? Pretty much this idea boils down to (imo) a two base pressure build.
Someone who is three basing compared to someone who is two basing but with lots of mules will have the better options. Minerals are for the base low tier of your army, if a Protoss gets a few Colossi and or Templars with Storm than your mass marines due to your muling will be evaporated and it won't matter that you have the extra mineral income, he has the extra gas income which is what has the biggest impact once you reach mid game.
The person on three bases will have the advantage of additional gas, but the disadvantage of additional territory to defend. Extra minerals means a Terran player can produce more marines, hellions, or marauders as all of them are limited by minerals. Two of those units are the core of the Terran army, the other is one of the best harassing units in the game. Resource wise the player on three bases would be superior, but only if they can hold it. The extra mineral income would make it harder for the other player to actually take and defend their third. You're also making the mistake of assuming the match up always two base vs three base play.
Either way though, being mined out faster than your opponent does mean you have higher mineral income which means more baseline units. But the issue is like I already said, if the person doesn't die to your extra mineral income than you'll be more spread out quicker than he will be.
So an advantage is balanced out by a disadvantage. It isn't clear to me that because of this the strat not viable. The fact of the matter is that very rarely are having more marines and marauders going to be bad for a Terran player. They are some of the most useful units in the game.
Add on to that if you're not muling correctly (putting one mule on each node before allowing a node to get a second mule) you'll mine out a node faster than the rest and your income will take a hit.
This is simply a matter of the skill of the player.
You just said exactly the issue I see in this strat, if you're defending let's say your fourth and your main, your fourth will be quite far away from your main and vice versa. How do you propose to hold off a full on attack at your main when you have your army split between your main and fourth? As well as how do you plan on being aggressive once you're spread out that much? Pretty much this idea boils down to (imo) a two base pressure build.
This might be true to some extent. I just think you are undervaluing the advantages the Terran player gains by having additional minerals/ defending less space (at least early on)/ higher percentage of army make up supply. Presumably those advantages will have some effect on the game. If frittered away, you'll certainly be in the awkward position of defending a far away expansion from a strong enemy. If used efficiently, your enemy should not be strong enough to take advantage of your expansion.
This is a response to your other questions in the other post that I didn't notice till after I hit post.
The reason I think it's the best way is if you're spending 550 minerals on two orbitals at any point in the game you're putting yourself 1110 minerals behind for at least two minutes. So the point of my idea is to defend and have a timing attack that you use to secure an expansion that will enable you to constantly produce out of the extra production facilities you setup to use with the OCs that built up energy for 8 mules. Otherwise you'll have production facilities that will have downtimes due to using scans and losing nodes.
Lol yes, I do care if my opponents income rate will be higher than me. If I'm unable to capitalize on the extra income I get from the two orbitals AFTER they had paid for themselves then I'm in a bad place.
It's a little advantage that can add up yes, but it's also attached to a big if and that if is IF you can secure another base in time to stay ahead in income.
Someone who is three basing compared to someone who is two basing but with lots of mules will have the better options. Minerals are for the base low tier of your army, if a Protoss gets a few Colossi and or Templars with Storm than your mass marines due to your muling will be evaporated and it won't matter that you have the extra mineral income, he has the extra gas income which is what has the biggest impact once you reach mid game.
The person on three bases will have the advantage of additional gas, but the disadvantage of additional territory to defend. Extra minerals means a Terran player can produce more marines, hellions, or marauders as all of them are limited by minerals. Two of those units are the core of the Terran army, the other is one of the best harassing units in the game. Resource wise the player on three bases would be superior, but only if they can hold it. The extra mineral income would make it harder for the other player to actually take and defend their third. You're also making the mistake of assuming the match up always two base vs three base play.
Either way though, being mined out faster than your opponent does mean you have higher mineral income which means more baseline units. But the issue is like I already said, if the person doesn't die to your extra mineral income than you'll be more spread out quicker than he will be.
So an advantage is balanced out by a disadvantage. It isn't clear to me that because of this the strat not viable. The fact of the matter is that very rarely are having more marines and marauders going to be bad for a Terran player. They are some of the most useful units in the game.
Add on to that if you're not muling correctly (putting one mule on each node before allowing a node to get a second mule) you'll mine out a node faster than the rest and your income will take a hit.
This is simply a matter of the skill of the player.
You just said exactly the issue I see in this strat, if you're defending let's say your fourth and your main, your fourth will be quite far away from your main and vice versa. How do you propose to hold off a full on attack at your main when you have your army split between your main and fourth? As well as how do you plan on being aggressive once you're spread out that much? Pretty much this idea boils down to (imo) a two base pressure build.
This might be true to some extent. I just think you are undervaluing the advantages the Terran player gains by having additional minerals/ defending less space (at least early on)/ higher percentage of army make up supply. Presumably those advantages will have some effect on the game. If frittered away, you'll certainly be in the awkward position of defending a far away expansion from a strong enemy. If used efficiently, your enemy should not be strong enough to take advantage of your expansion.
Marines, Helions, and Marauders become less and less efficient as the game progresses. If you're attacking the third of a Zerg for instance what is stopping that Zerg from counter attacking your natural? The issue is you can only capitalize on someone being spread out if you have the units to do so, or are Zerg lol. As in dropships (send one or two over etc.) or a proxy pylon/warp prism. It's only a mistake if your opponent doesn't scout and see the extra OCs being build which means you won't be pushing out for a bit, which means they CAN secure a third safely. That's the thing I was pointing out earlier, you're giving your opponent an advantage by spending that extra money on OCs instead of on your army making you defensive till the OCs start benefiting you. I'm basing what I'm saying off of a game where there is no advantage to either player until you spend that extra money on OCs that won't be used for an expansion anytime soon.
Yes, it's an advantage/disadvantage, and yes having extra marauders and marines is a disadvantage if it's due to mining out your base faster and those extra units don't deal enough damage to justify mining out faster. Add on to that there is a timing window where you will be weaker than your opponent due to the OCs not benefiting you until X time has past.
Yes and no, it's more about memory than skill, it doesn't take skill to press E and click a different node, it takes a good memory. The issue is that if you have to pull your workers due to a Helion drop, Nydus worm etc. most players even Pros won't remember which node the Mule was on, especially if they have multiple.
I'm definitely not undervaluing it, I just think it's not a great thing to do since you mine out faster and have a rather large window where you'll be behind your opponent. The other issue I see is that with the larger income comes more production facilities which means more supply depots are needed, so you won't be spending all that extra money on just units, especially if you're getting lots of Marauders. The strat pretty much relies on your opponent not taking advantage of a timing window, not holding off your pressure from the extra income, and not denying you a third. As Artosis says, a strategy that relies on your opponent making a mistake/s is a bad strategy. Don't confuse that with a rush or cheese, that relies on the element of surprise more than the other player making a mistake.
I tried a mass orbital build against a Zerg friend in a few games last night. He's a little rusty because he hasn't played in a month but he is at least as good as me. Only a few games can't give me any conclusive evidence but this feels really viable. I wasn't even doing it nearly as well as I could if I refined things, but it actually felt like Sauron Terran. He wasn't sure what he could do to keep up.
My rough build order is actually pretty conservative, and I still end up building depots. I probably should just keep building orbitals throughout the game though. I open with a no gas 2 rax with some bunker pressure, just to get him to make lings. Then 3 command centers, using one to wall off the ramp, and preferably grabbing the natural if it's easy to secure. It's okay to just keep them in base for a while and pump workers from all four, and wait for all the new barracks to kick in. You mine out the main SO fast when you're doing this. After the fourth cc starts I'll get double gas and drop a bunch of barracks, get stim, cs, conc, decent marauder numbers.
I differ from the OP in that I make scvs from all the orbitals and I still need depots to support it. But the idea is still there. All those mules so early springboard my production and I actually pass the Zerg pretty easily. In our last game on Shakuras, I put on no pressure and he knew what build I was doing, so he droned as hard as he could (only 4 lings) up to about 60 workers, and I kept up, plus mules. After my barracks kick in and I'm constantly pouring m&m into his base, I expand aggressively and supplement with tanks and medivacs. The only problem I had with this was that the expos were floated-off orbitals from my main and they were vulnerable to fast counterattacks. I'll probably just build PFs and leave the orbitals unless the base is very defensible.
I don't race to 200/200 but with constant trading my army just replenishes faster. If I constantly make orbitals I suspect this to be even more true. I'm excited to keep working on this!
Edit: make sure to use the mules on the newest base. If you mine out your main too early it ciuts into your income quite a bit.
But the OP's numbers are really, really rubbish I must say.
In order to put together a fully saturated base, it costs money. You need to build the command center, and you need to build 24 workers, those 24 workers need to eat - so you also gotta build supply depots.
The true cost of an SCV is 50 minerals plus 1 supply (using a supply depot, a supply is worth 12.5 minerals) - so an SCV is costs 62.5 minerals. 24 of these will cost you 1500 minerals + 400 for the command center.
So it costs 1900 minerals to build and fully saturate an expansion - the CC itself is only ~25% of the total cost - the vast majority is in the workers and supply.
Well... that's true. But why wouldn't you upgrade your CC to an OC anyway? And why wouldn't you substract the cost of the supply provided by the CC? The real cost is thus : 1500 SCVs + 400 CC + 150 OC - 137.5 Supply = 1912.5 minerals But then the real income is : 800 (SCVs, according to OP's calculations) + 180 (MULEs) = 980 minerals/minute
So, in fact, for approx. the same cost that was stated, the OP is off by 22.5%.
Now, a pure "farming OC" must cost: 400 CC + 150 OC - 137.5 Supply = 412.5 minerals With an income of: 180 minerals/minute
Which means that to get the equivalent income of a normal muling base with purely farming OCs, you need 980 / 180 = 5.44 farming OCs This is going to cost you 5.44 * 412.5 = 2245 minerals Which is oftentimes higher than 1912.5 minerals for a normal fully saturated base.
So what am I missing here? I'm not even accounting for the fact that a CC+OC takes a lot of time to build.
On December 05 2010 03:29 Aeruthus wrote: This is a response to your other questions in the other post that I didn't notice till after I hit post.
The reason I think it's the best way is if you're spending 550 minerals on two orbitals at any point in the game you're putting yourself 1110 minerals behind for at least two minutes. So the point of my idea is to defend and have a timing attack that you use to secure an expansion that will enable you to constantly produce out of the extra production facilities you setup to use with the OCs that built up energy for 8 mules. Otherwise you'll have production facilities that will have downtimes due to using scans and losing nodes.
Lol yes, I do care if my opponents income rate will be higher than me. If I'm unable to capitalize on the extra income I get from the two orbitals AFTER they had paid for themselves then I'm in a bad place.
It's a little advantage that can add up yes, but it's also attached to a big if and that if is IF you can secure another base in time to stay ahead in income.
Marines, Helions, and Marauders become less and less efficient as the game progresses. If you're attacking the third of a Zerg for instance what is stopping that Zerg from counter attacking your natural? The issue is you can only capitalize on someone being spread out if you have the units to do so, or are Zerg lol. As in dropships (send one or two over etc.) or a proxy pylon/warp prism. It's only a mistake if your opponent doesn't scout and see the extra OCs being build which means you won't be pushing out for a bit, which means they CAN secure a third safely. That's the thing I was pointing out earlier, you're giving your opponent an advantage by spending that extra money on OCs instead of on your army making you defensive till the OCs start benefiting you. I'm basing what I'm saying off of a game where there is no advantage to either player until you spend that extra money on OCs that won't be used for an expansion anytime soon.
Yes, it's an advantage/disadvantage, and yes having extra marauders and marines is a disadvantage if it's due to mining out your base faster and those extra units don't deal enough damage to justify mining out faster. Add on to that there is a timing window where you will be weaker than your opponent due to the OCs not benefiting you until X time has past.
Yes and no, it's more about memory than skill, it doesn't take skill to press E and click a different node, it takes a good memory. The issue is that if you have to pull your workers due to a Helion drop, Nydus worm etc. most players even Pros won't remember which node the Mule was on, especially if they have multiple.
I'm definitely not undervaluing it, I just think it's not a great thing to do since you mine out faster and have a rather large window where you'll be behind your opponent. The other issue I see is that with the larger income comes more production facilities which means more supply depots are needed, so you won't be spending all that extra money on just units, especially if you're getting lots of Marauders. The strat pretty much relies on your opponent not taking advantage of a timing window, not holding off your pressure from the extra income, and not denying you a third. As Artosis says, a strategy that relies on your opponent making a mistake/s is a bad strategy. Don't confuse that with a rush or cheese, that relies on the element of surprise more than the other player making a mistake.
To the extent that your argument is based upon the idea that having money sooner is a bad thing, it is fundamentally flawed. You are valuing income rate over money actually received. You are valuing potential over realized gains. All else being equal, it always better to have money now rather than to have money later. Always. There are no exceptions to this principle.
Assuming that neither player has an advantage until an extra Orbital Command is built is also a mistake. You aren't generally going to expand blindly without having first secured some advantage and similarly you probably shouldn't blindly invest 550 minerals into your economy without timing it during a period where you have an advantage.
Well it isn't that there are no exceptions. Some money now may be outweighed by a LOT of money later. That is sort of the idea with building the orbital commands. They are a large down payment, but they do return a lot of money, especially when you have several of them.
It does cost 2200+ minerals in down payment to get a saturated base's worth of income in pure mules, it must be purchased in large chunks of 400, and has no returns until over two minutes after the intiial investment. However it is indeed a worthwhile investment if you can stay competitive as your investment "matures" and this is the problem. Even if your enemy doesn't charge in and kill you, it is more efficient in the short term to take a base and make workers. And it takes so long to farm up your orbital commands that the other player could take several bases, especially if they are zerg. This is not favorable for the farming terran. You need enough units to A) not die to aggression, and B) threaten the enemy enough so they can't just take the entire map without dying to your aggression.
My general rule of thumb is that 4 OCs = 1 base. A fully saturated base takes is actually about 5 and change, since each mule is worth about 3.5 workers. The way I usually do this, I build the orbital command, burn the energy, and then fly it somewhere I've scouted rather than just leave them in the base. By the time it gets there it has another mule ready, and I can focus mules on the new base, and transfer workers. All other things being equal, having lots of bases being shallowly drawn from is better than hardcore mining from one or two bases, unless it's a base that is dangerous, such as on your enemy's half of the map. In that case, DRILL BABY DRILL.
By the way, I think "farming" is a good name for the action of building OCs just to mule with.
On December 05 2010 05:04 ledarsi wrote: Well it isn't that there are no exceptions. Some money now may be outweighed by a LOT of money later. That is sort of the idea with building the orbital commands. They are a large down payment, but they do return a lot of money, especially when you have several of them.
Different issue entirely. I was addressing his argument that the only plausible strategy involved saving up OC energy to get multiple mules. There is simply no reason to do this outside of using them to mine out the enemies base. If your choices are x money now or x money later, you always choose x money now.
I also think there is some confusion about what counts as realized income. If you spend money to buy a command center you aren't losing the money, you are using it. Your net assets haven't changed. It is irrelevant whether your 550 minerals is in the form of minerals in the bank, marines, or an OC.
The only real flaw I see in the OPs argument is that mules only makes you mine more MINERALS not GAS. Gas > Minerals. What would you do with all your minerals? Build more CCs? And then what?
OCs can strip mine a gold base ridiculously fast. In situations where it's hard to get another base, even getting 4 mules off on a gold unnoticed can more than pay for itself even if you lose the OC.
So I've dramatically re-written the first post. A couple days of thinking about this in more detail lead me to think about it a little clearer, and the insane attention this thread has gotten has made me not try to sell it so hard (it will get tested enough to either live or die by its win/loss in ladder, not by my arguments).
EDIT: would a mod mind renaming the thread to [G] OC Farming?
In order to put together a fully saturated base, it costs money. You need to build the command center, and you need to build 24 workers, those 24 workers need to eat - so you also gotta build supply depots.
The true cost of an SCV is 50 minerals plus 1 supply (using a supply depot, a supply is worth 12.5 minerals) - so an SCV is costs 62.5 minerals. 24 of these will cost you 1500 minerals + 400 for the command center.
So it costs 1900 minerals to build and fully saturate an expansion - the CC itself is only ~25% of the total cost - the vast majority is in the workers and supply.
Well... that's true. But why wouldn't you upgrade your CC to an OC anyway? And why wouldn't you substract the cost of the supply provided by the CC? The real cost is thus : 1500 SCVs + 400 CC + 150 OC - 137.5 Supply = 1912.5 minerals But then the real income is : 800 (SCVs, according to OP's calculations) + 180 (MULEs) = 980 minerals/minute
So, in fact, for approx. the same cost that was stated, the OP is off by 22.5%.
Now, a pure "farming OC" must cost: 400 CC + 150 OC - 137.5 Supply = 412.5 minerals With an income of: 180 minerals/minute
Which means that to get the equivalent income of a normal muling base with purely farming OCs, you need 980 / 180 = 5.44 farming OCs This is going to cost you 5.44 * 412.5 = 2245 minerals Which is oftentimes higher than 1912.5 minerals for a normal fully saturated base.
So what am I missing here? I'm not even accounting for the fact that a CC+OC takes a lot of time to build.
You included an extra mule in income to produce ~22.5% addl income.My income numbers cited there were intended to be a bit more generic (as they could be compared to toss or ~zerg). The point was to illustrate how good mules are - and explain the actual costs involved with an expansion (this was the key point - as the recent edit to the main post makes much clearer), and comparing mules to mules seemed a little redundant.
For the record OC income is actually closer to 200/m/m because of the additional overlapping time (it takes about 85 seconds for 50 energy so there is a small overlap worth about 20-30 minerals). I played a little fast and loose with some of the numbers, sure, but the numbers were and means to an end not the end itself.
By using the more accurate full mule income you drop the .44 portion (diff between 180 and 200 m/min) - you come up with 5 OCs instead of 4 because you're including an additional MULE in expo. I wouldn't call your numbers disingenuous or rubbish, but you're making a different comparison than I was - comparing apples to oranges.
If you want to include MULE income in a normal expo vs MULE income in an OC farming example, feel free, but don't call my numbers rubbish.
I find it annoying that you're only looking to get the mule nerfed and thus portray numbers to reflect OP'ness. Your post would be a lot better if you set aside your (biased) Protoss POV and did not try to make things more spectacular than they are.
Like showing a picture of an OC and 4 mules mining, saying the income is similar to a 100% saturated base and then claiming the cost to be 550 minerals whilst the saturated base costs 1800/1900 minerals.
This would only happen if you neglected to throw down mules for 3 cycles which means you didn't get the income during the previous cycles. To get constant 4 mules you'd need 4 OC's which costs 2200 minerals, not to mention the 540 seconds of combined build/ morph time and the mining time lost by building them.
In my experience you also never have two mules mining at the same time, whenever you drop the mule instantly on 50 energy the other is busy mining but explodes before returning it's cargo ... this was the reason sockfolding/ mineral boosting was useful while it lasted. If you post numbers, get them from testing, not by looking up MULE duration and multiplying it by it's average minerals per second.
The biggest flaw in your argument overall is that you don't seem to count time as a resource, but it is. You can compare a saturated Zerg base versus a Protoss and a Terran one, but you don't consider the fact that Terran has slowest harvester production and thus saturates slower. Money now is more important than money later, to quote Day 9.
Overall I think OC farming could be useful in the late-game to regain some food, but as shown, constant SCV production and expanding delivers more bang for buck income and time-wise, it's also far more efficient not-dying-wise
On December 05 2010 09:50 Saechiis wrote: I find it annoying that you're only looking to get the mule nerfed and thus portray numbers to reflect OP'ness. Your post would be a lot better if you set aside your (biased) Protoss POV and did not try to make things more spectacular than they are.
I'll be totally honest. After spending so much time on this thread I'm really hoping they just buff chrono/queens instead of nerfing mules at this point
Sure, I want to figure out a game breaking strategy - which is what started this thread in the first place. I don't know if this will be game breaking or not, but time will tell.
Like showing a picture of an OC and 4 mules mining, saying the income is similar to a 100% saturated base and then claiming the cost to be 550 minerals whilst the saturated base costs 1800/1900 minerals.
This would only happen if you neglected to throw down mules for 3 cycles which means you didn't get the income during the previous cycles. To get constant 4 mules you'd need 4 OC's which costs 2200 minerals, not to mention the 540 seconds of combined build/ morph time and the mining time lost by building them.
So after reading 18 pages of people missing the key points because I had too many numbers in the post - now I have people missing key points because I have too many pictures...
Did you really not read the paragraph RIGHT AFTER the picture?
Admittedly, this is a favorable oversimplification depending on your perspective, to get those 4 mules working constantly you need 4 OCs. With a bit of a discount considering you start with one CC, getting 3 addl OCs will cost you 1390 (food adjusted cost @12.5 per food not including first CC in food discount or build cost). That doesn't seem that great, sure you save a 400-500 minerals - but not game breaking.
The point of those pictures was talking about RISK and EXPOSURE. The biggest value to this technique is in minimization of risk - allowing you to be far more aggressive in how you place expansions and MULE them.
On December 05 2010 03:29 Aeruthus wrote: This is a response to your other questions in the other post that I didn't notice till after I hit post.
The reason I think it's the best way is if you're spending 550 minerals on two orbitals at any point in the game you're putting yourself 1110 minerals behind for at least two minutes. So the point of my idea is to defend and have a timing attack that you use to secure an expansion that will enable you to constantly produce out of the extra production facilities you setup to use with the OCs that built up energy for 8 mules. Otherwise you'll have production facilities that will have downtimes due to using scans and losing nodes.
Lol yes, I do care if my opponents income rate will be higher than me. If I'm unable to capitalize on the extra income I get from the two orbitals AFTER they had paid for themselves then I'm in a bad place.
It's a little advantage that can add up yes, but it's also attached to a big if and that if is IF you can secure another base in time to stay ahead in income.
Marines, Helions, and Marauders become less and less efficient as the game progresses. If you're attacking the third of a Zerg for instance what is stopping that Zerg from counter attacking your natural? The issue is you can only capitalize on someone being spread out if you have the units to do so, or are Zerg lol. As in dropships (send one or two over etc.) or a proxy pylon/warp prism. It's only a mistake if your opponent doesn't scout and see the extra OCs being build which means you won't be pushing out for a bit, which means they CAN secure a third safely. That's the thing I was pointing out earlier, you're giving your opponent an advantage by spending that extra money on OCs instead of on your army making you defensive till the OCs start benefiting you. I'm basing what I'm saying off of a game where there is no advantage to either player until you spend that extra money on OCs that won't be used for an expansion anytime soon.
Yes, it's an advantage/disadvantage, and yes having extra marauders and marines is a disadvantage if it's due to mining out your base faster and those extra units don't deal enough damage to justify mining out faster. Add on to that there is a timing window where you will be weaker than your opponent due to the OCs not benefiting you until X time has past.
Yes and no, it's more about memory than skill, it doesn't take skill to press E and click a different node, it takes a good memory. The issue is that if you have to pull your workers due to a Helion drop, Nydus worm etc. most players even Pros won't remember which node the Mule was on, especially if they have multiple.
I'm definitely not undervaluing it, I just think it's not a great thing to do since you mine out faster and have a rather large window where you'll be behind your opponent. The other issue I see is that with the larger income comes more production facilities which means more supply depots are needed, so you won't be spending all that extra money on just units, especially if you're getting lots of Marauders. The strat pretty much relies on your opponent not taking advantage of a timing window, not holding off your pressure from the extra income, and not denying you a third. As Artosis says, a strategy that relies on your opponent making a mistake/s is a bad strategy. Don't confuse that with a rush or cheese, that relies on the element of surprise more than the other player making a mistake.
To the extent that your argument is based upon the idea that having money sooner is a bad thing, it is fundamentally flawed. You are valuing income rate over money actually received. You are valuing potential over realized gains. All else being equal, it always better to have money now rather than to have money later. Always. There are no exceptions to this principle.
Assuming that neither player has an advantage until an extra Orbital Command is built is also a mistake. You aren't generally going to expand blindly without having first secured some advantage and similarly you probably shouldn't blindly invest 550 minerals into your economy without timing it during a period where you have an advantage.
I never only said more money sooner is bad, I've talked about both sides and how it does give an advantage and a disadvantage but that I feel the disadvantage out ways the advantage.
Like I already said I weighed both sides and stated that I feel it is more of a disadvantage which is why I'm against it. I do see how the surge of income is beneficial but I don't think that overall it is better than playing without the extra OCs.
There are many exceptions to that principle, best example is the lottery, if you take a lump sum you get far less than if you take smaller sums over a few years. But if we're talking SC2 reality, having more minerals now means having less later, and if you get to that point where it's later in the game, you're going to have an issue on your hands. Which I already pointed out with being spread out and the lack of unit efficiency once you reach later into the game (units that you use that extra mineral surge on).
Why is that a mistake? You, the person who began arguing with me never stated when you build your OC, so why would I assume you would only place it during an advantage? However I did specifically talk about how placing it during an advantage pretty much removes that advantage until the OC begins benefiting you, meaning instead of building on that advantage over and over again you are wiping it and replacing it a bit later once it begins bearing fruit. So to use your "principle" All else being equal, it always better to have advantages now rather than to have advantages later. Always.
Yes, that is true it is bad to expand blindly, but extra OCs aren't meant for expansions till a while later, add to that you're arguing for this strategy which means it is up to you to defend it, so it is up to you to explain the strategy. Not up to those of us asking questions and saying as it is shown now we don't like it to assume how you are going to execute the strategy.
I might be able to just boil my point down to, it is better to take a third and have the two extra gas and less mineral income than to have a higher mineral income and a lower gas income, and that I think this becomes more apparent as the game progresses.
On December 05 2010 09:50 Saechiis wrote: I find it annoying that you're only looking to get the mule nerfed and thus portray numbers to reflect OP'ness. Your post would be a lot better if you set aside your (biased) Protoss POV and did not try to make things more spectacular than they are.
I'll be totally honest. After spending so much time on this thread I'm really hoping they just buff chrono/queens instead of nerfing mules at this point
Sure, I want to figure out a game breaking strategy - which is what started this thread in the first place. I don't know if this will be game breaking or not, but time will tell.
Like showing a picture of an OC and 4 mules mining, saying the income is similar to a 100% saturated base and then claiming the cost to be 550 minerals whilst the saturated base costs 1800/1900 minerals.
This would only happen if you neglected to throw down mules for 3 cycles which means you didn't get the income during the previous cycles. To get constant 4 mules you'd need 4 OC's which costs 2200 minerals, not to mention the 540 seconds of combined build/ morph time and the mining time lost by building them.
So after reading 18 pages of people missing the key points because I had too many numbers in the post - now I have people missing key points because I have too many pictures...
Did you really not read the paragraph RIGHT AFTER the picture?
Admittedly, this is a favorable oversimplification depending on your perspective, to get those 4 mules working constantly you need 4 OCs. With a bit of a discount considering you start with one CC, getting 3 addl OCs will cost you 1390 (food adjusted cost @12.5 per food not including first CC in food discount or build cost). That doesn't seem that great, sure you save a 400-500 minerals - but not game breaking.
The point of those pictures was talking about RISK and EXPOSURE. The biggest value to this technique is in minimization of risk - allowing you to be far more aggressive in how you place MULE Stations.
So you realise that the picture and the accompanying text are misleading, but rather than changing the cost to 2200 instead of 550 minerals you just casually mention the following paragraph that it "is a favorable oversimplification depending on your perspective".
And by that you mean "It is a misleading picture, but not if you want the mule to be nerfed" ...
People see what they want to see, and we both know that a majority of people would rather look at the picture and declare it as proof of OP'ness rather than reading your clarification on it being a "favorable oversimplification depending on your perspective". You're just hoping it will cause a mule-OP snowball even though the thread has shown that OC farming isn't favorable over a constant SCV production until you're maxed in the ultra-lategame.
Why don't you spend the time comparing Terran economy vs Protoss economy with constant Mule vs Chronoboosted probes? I doubt Protoss would be behind in a fair comparison of income/ expenditure/ time
On December 05 2010 10:21 Saechiis wrote: Why don't you spend the time comparing Terran economy vs Protoss economy with constant Mule vs Chronoboosted probes? I doubt Protoss would be behind in a fair comparison of income/ expenditure/ time
...sigh .... :/
I think you're really missing the point. I tried to simplify it so that it was much easier to understand.
The OC is different from probes/drones/scv because of oversaturation and because it doesn't have to be local. It functions in a different way from other workers and that allows it to be used in a different and non conventional way.
Again, dude, my post will not nerf mules. If people realize how valuable they are and use them more efficiently then they have before - and this nets terran many more wins - then yes, they'll get nerfed (or hopefully, chronoboost/queens will get buffed). But it won't be cuz of my post, it'll just be because my post helped make people use this tool much better than they were before.
EDIT: If I'm totally wrong and my post sucks then it won't work. If it does, then it just might shift the meta a little, shift the matchups a little and make new things possible. Time will tell
Good job 30to1 for keeping the thread fresh and alive. Have been playing with this strat for a while and if not taken to the extreme it is viable and feels better (income wise) than usuall. If i got some got opponents that prove the viability of the this strat i will post a replay. Most people die to early game aggression and miss the maxed army
On December 05 2010 10:21 Saechiis wrote: Why don't you spend the time comparing Terran economy vs Protoss economy with constant Mule vs Chronoboosted probes? I doubt Protoss would be behind in a fair comparison of income/ expenditure/ time
...sigh .... :/
I think you're really missing the point. I tried to simplify it so that it was much easier to understand.
The OC is different from probes/drones/scv because of oversaturation and because it doesn't have to be local. It functions in a different way from other workers and that allows it to be used in a different and non conventional way.
Again, dude, my post will not nerf mules. If people realize how valuable they are and use them more efficiently then they have before - and this nets terran many more wins - then yes, they'll get nerfed (or hopefully, chronoboost/queens will get buffed). But it won't be cuz of my post, it'll just be because my post helped make people use this tool much better than they were before.
EDIT: If I'm totally wrong and my post sucks then it won't work. If it does, then it just might shift the meta a little, shift the matchups a little and make new things possible. Time will tell
You say simplify, I say misleading. The picture makes it much easier to misunderstand how it compares to the other pictures. The objective of a simplification is to make things, in fact, easier to understand, not to make it easier to misunderstand. The objective of pictures is to further clarify your text, not to make people believe things that aren't true. A 550 mineral investment won't get you a 800/m/minute income as your picture makes believe, it gives you a quarter of that. It's called misleading people and it gets me all cranky.
You think the queen and chronoboost need a buff as macro-mechanics. That suggests the mule gives Terran a superior economy, thus implying it's overpowered. I like innovation, I don't like your drive however.
I've tried out a slight modification to this style that seems safer.
Expand with loaded command centers. Morph them into orbital commands while mining. Use mules normally, etc. The important part is what you do next. Since you're building more command centers, you can repeat the process if you like. But as another option you can send a command center to a base that is already taken by an orbital command, and turn it into a planetary fortress, and then relocate the orbital command either into your main or to another expansion.
The typical style for using planetary fortresses is to put them at your most exposed bases. Which makes sense since fortresses are the hardest base to kill and can defend themselves a bit even without an army to help. I propose instead using planetary fortresses protected by extensive use of missile turrets to prevent harassment of bases that are not exposed. For exposed bases you will want to use your orbital commands/command centers.
The reason this synergizes is because your "safe" bases will have the most scv's at them, and planetary fortresses benefit from repair as well as being able to shelter the largest number of scv's. Planetary fortresses cannot lift off, but this is a base you have no intention of evacuating from anyway so this deficiency is irrelevant.
For your exposed bases, you will want to be using a skeleton crew- few or no scv's, and making extensive use of mules. It's a good idea to focus fire all your mules at your most exposed base to deplete the base as quickly as possible. The ability to lift off is critical for this "strip mining" function since you're going to need to relocate if it is successful. Since you can't load mules anyway, the lack of cargo space of an orbital command is not really relevant, and in the event that attackers come the ability to lift off is going to be much more useful than being extra durable, or having a weapon.
I understand this is completely the opposite of the way most people typically use these structures, but it makes quite a bit of sense. A planetary fortress isn't going to stop a massive army anyway, and in the event that an army finds your strip mining orbital command, yes you lose the OC but thats 550 minerals and maybe a couple scv's. A saturated planetary fortress is going to hurt much more to lose, and take longer to replace since it takes a fair bit of time to make scvs.
The final and most important consideration is the fact that you have an army. If you limit yourself to strip mining one base at a time, you can pretty easily defend it with your mobile forces. It seems siege tanks would be especially good at this job. If you put a planetary fortress at your most exposed base, yes it makes the base harder to kill, but if you also put your army there it leaves your orbital commands at your "safer" bases relatively unprotected. The enemy army is much more likely to come gunning with their entire army for your most exposed base, and it seems improbable that their entire army could somehow slip past in numbers sufficient to raze a planetary fortress defended with turrets. A planetary fortress at your most exposed base wouldn't stop them anyway, you're going to need your units there. Ergo, you do not need to also have a fortress there.
On December 05 2010 10:51 Saechiis wrote: The objective of pictures is to further clarify your text, not to make people believe things that aren't true. A 550 mineral investment won't get you a 800/m/minute income as your picture makes believe, it gives you a quarter of that. It's called misleading people and it gets me all cranky.
The trick Saechiis, is that I'm not comparing INVESTMENT, I'm comparing INVESTMENT AT RISK.
It's a sorta tricky idea in some ways but sort of simple in other ways - people tend to think of expansions as costing as much as the building. What I was trying to show is that the INVESTMENT AT RISK at an expansion is far more than the building, the workers are a tremendous investment (that die easy) that makes it risky to take an expansion.
You'll notice that most of the time players only take expansions that they feel they can realistically defend. Thats because if they saturate it, they're RISKING close to 2000 minerals and a lot of worker creation time.
But with OC Expands, you are not taking the same RISK. At worst you lose 550 in actual invested minerals. But MORE IMPORTANTLY if at a conventional expansion all your workers die it takes about EIGHT MINUTES to rebuild them (divided by the number of bases building). Eight minutes of fully saturated lost income is roughly 6400 minerals. So not only are you risking close to 2k of raw investment, you are risking 6400 in lost income if the workers get killed.
An OC based expo does not have that weakness and does not require that risk. It is fundamentally different and allows for much more aggressive, riskier expansion.
Thats the point I was trying to make with the pictures. If you have a suggestion on how I can better word this to make it clearer for people, please make it.
On that picture it shows an OC at an expansion with 4 mules mining.
At the top it says: ~800/m/minute
At the bottom it says: This costs: 550 minerals / 0 supply
Are you seriously suggesting this doesn't imply a 550 mineral investment wil get you 800 minerals per minute income? You're seriously not trying to contrast this misleading image with the pictures of saturated Toss and Zerg bases with similar income to make it seem very overpowered?
I'm done as I'm getting really really annoyed, hail the end of the supply depot lol.
On that picture it shows an OC at an expansion with 4 mules mining.
At the top it says: ~800/m/minute
At the bottom it says: This costs: 550 minerals / 0 supply
Are you seriously suggesting this doesn't imply a 550 mineral investment wil get you 800 minerals per minute income? You're seriously not trying to contrast this misleading image with the pictures of saturated Toss and Zerg bases with similar income to make it seem very overpowered?
I'm done as I'm getting really really annoyed, hail the end of the supply depot lol.
Saechiis... I have the pictures, then I have FOUR PARAGRAPHS OF TEXT explaining it!
Admittedly, this is a favorable oversimplification depending on your perspective, to get those 4 mules working constantly you need 4 OCs. With a bit of a discount considering you start with one CC, getting 3 addl OCs will cost you 1390 (food adjusted cost @12.5 per food not including first CC in food discount or build cost). That doesn't seem that great, sure you save a 400-500 minerals - but not game breaking.
The difference is in exposure and vulnerability. Look at those three bases and the costs under them. Thats how many minerals you're risking on your expansion. The real cost of an expansion is not the 3-400 minerals to build the base, the real cost is in the 1500 minerals to build the workers and the eight minutes it takes to replace them if they die.
Because an OC/MULE only expansion is nearly risk free compared to other bases and they fly you can take risks with them that you never would have dreamed of with a real expansion. The reality is, if a big threat drops and stims on your door and kills all your mules, it sucks, it hurts, and yeah, it might lose you a game. But often, you can just lift the thing, stick it somewhere else, call more mules and be just fine.
OC Farming is superior to a normal expansion since it carries less Risk. That means you can be more aggressive about 'expanding' to vulnerable areas - including gold expos or corner locations.
If you have a suggestion on how this can be better explained - about how the numbers there revolve around how many minerals you're RISKING in the expansion. Let me know. Maybe I'll edit the post so it'll be better.
30to1 In my eyes the best way to explain this strategy is to say that you are investing now so that later you can get an advantage. Where as with the normal build SCVs, saturate, you're investing now to get an advantage now. The only issue I see with this explanation though is if you try to argue one being better than the other, than it boils down to if you lose that expansion among other factors and it's pointless to argue something like that.
I think the idea about 'minerals at risk' in an expansion is a really powerful idea and I really tried to highlight that (by even putting in a bunch of pictures )
It's a sort of hard post to balance, since I'm trying to be really clear so people can understand the ideas (they're not really complex, but they aren't the kinds of things that people are used to reading about on these forums). While at the same time being accurate enough with the numbers to deal with people who nitpick on that sort of thing AND without using a lot of calculations that only 1 in 100 people reading this will care about much less really follow.
On that picture it shows an OC at an expansion with 4 mules mining.
At the top it says: ~800/m/minute
At the bottom it says: This costs: 550 minerals / 0 supply
Are you seriously suggesting this doesn't imply a 550 mineral investment wil get you 800 minerals per minute income? You're seriously not trying to contrast this misleading image with the pictures of saturated Toss and Zerg bases with similar income to make it seem very overpowered?
I'm done as I'm getting really really annoyed, hail the end of the supply depot lol.
Saechiis... I have the pictures, then I have FOUR PARAGRAPHS OF TEXT explaining it!
So, maybe make the pictures reflect reality and leave out the 4 paragraphs of text explaining how the image is misleading? Seems less work for all of us.
The mineral income you gain by using OC Farms is insane. The only downside is that you can be vulnerable to early pressure and you will be extremely gas starved. Using this method I was actually able to keep up with the production rates of Zerg and Protoss in games that I would have been crushed in if hadn't using the OC Farm.
On that picture it shows an OC at an expansion with 4 mules mining.
At the top it says: ~800/m/minute
At the bottom it says: This costs: 550 minerals / 0 supply
Are you seriously suggesting this doesn't imply a 550 mineral investment wil get you 800 minerals per minute income? You're seriously not trying to contrast this misleading image with the pictures of saturated Toss and Zerg bases with similar income to make it seem very overpowered?
I'm done as I'm getting really really annoyed, hail the end of the supply depot lol.
Saechiis... I have the pictures, then I have FOUR PARAGRAPHS OF TEXT explaining it!
So, maybe make the pictures reflect reality and leave out the 4 paragraphs of text explaining how the image is misleading? Seems less work for all of us.
Tell you what Sae. I'll think about trying to re-word some of that so that its clearer. But honestly, I put hours into writing that and making the images and shit. And I just wanted to see a few positive posts saying how it was helpful and informative
I haven't even gotten to play today since I've been just editing that post and commenting and shit ;p
On December 05 2010 11:47 ABXG wrote: The mineral income you gain by using OC Farms is insane. The only downside is that you can be vulnerable to early pressure and you will be extremely gas starved. Using this method I was actually able to keep up with the production rates of Zerg and Protoss in games that I would have been crushed in if hadn't using the OC Farm.
I'm glad to hear it ABXG! Feel free to post any replays.
I never only said more money sooner is bad, I've talked about both sides and how it does give an advantage and a disadvantage but that I feel the disadvantage out ways the advantage.
Like I already said I weighed both sides and stated that I feel it is more of a disadvantage which is why I'm against it. I do see how the surge of income is beneficial but I don't think that overall it is better than playing without the extra OCs.
Your analysis seemed to indicate confusion regarding economic principles. You were primarily concerned about your income rate, ignoring that your total minerals mined would be superior. Income rate is only important because it indicates how many minerals you are actually receiving. It has no value independent of that fact. I wanted to clarify any possible confusion. If there was none, then there is nothing to worry about.
There are many exceptions to that principle, best example is the lottery, if you take a lump sum you get far less than if you take smaller sums over a few years.
Your example is flawed because it assumes that you'll actually receive fewer total resources if you elect to receive now. In Starcraft 2 the total minerals per base is static. You either receive the 12,000 minerals from that base now or you receive 12,000 minerals at a later time. The former option will always be the superior option if everything else remains the same. This is why it is pointless to save up energy for multiple mules. It will always be better to those have minerals sooner.
But if we're talking SC2 reality, having more minerals now means having less later, and if you get to that point where it's later in the game, you're going to have an issue on your hands. Which I already pointed out with being spread out and the lack of unit efficiency once you reach later into the game (units that you use that extra mineral surge on).
I understand your concern, but it seems misplaced to me. How to best take advantage of additional minerals earlier in the game is a different issue from whether more minerals earlier is superior. If there is truly no way that additional minerals early in the game can help secure a late game advantage, then your argument would have merit. I don't believe that to be case. Worse case scenario the additional minerals can be used to secure expansions for the gas to better improve your unit composition. I'd also like to point out that outside of 200 v 200 supply battles, additional marines to support an attack or provide defense is never a bad thing.
Why is that a mistake? You, the person who began arguing with me never stated when you build your OC, so why would I assume you would only place it during an advantage?
Perhaps this is the root of our disagreement and confusion. My initial post was in response to your critique of this post:
On December 04 2010 11:25 Kennigit wrote: I think a lot of you are missing the point - don't take this as "spawn...make rax, make orbitals, win game". Thats not whats important. What is important is the idea that at certain safe timings, you could add extra OCs (after destroying enemy army when you'd normally expand?) and get a larger advantage.
Very interested to see what top level players can do with this idea.
I have not argued for a particular build, but only for a different way of thinking about the Terran macro mechanic. My only goal has been to suggest that there is a unique and viable way to use this mechanic. An orbital command does not need to be limited to a tool of expansion. Rather it can be thought of as a different type of economic investment. Think of an orbital command not as a base, but rather a type of super SCV. Would you be willing to invest in a 550 minerals (440 minerals adjusted for the supply provided) for a super scv? Attributes of this SCV:
1) Practically invincible as you'd have to destroy the command center, not the SCV itself.
2) Can be immediately sent to any corner of the map.
3) They harvest at 4 times the normal rate of an SCV on an unoccupied patch, or 8 times the rate of the third scv on patch.
4) Its harvesting rate is unaffected by the presence of other scvs.
5) Uses no supply.
I think if this unit were present in the game and labeled as a superior SCV, people would more readily accept its use.
However I did specifically talk about how placing it during an advantage pretty much removes that advantage until the OC begins benefiting you, meaning instead of building on that advantage over and over again you are wiping it and replacing it a bit later once it begins bearing fruit.
This is no different than building and occupying an expansion or really any type of investment you make in the game.
I might be able to just boil my point down to, it is better to take a third and have the two extra gas and less mineral income than to have a higher mineral income and a lower gas income, and that I think this becomes more apparent as the game progresses.
Reasonable argument. It many instances you are probably correct. If one is capable of taking and defending a third, it is probably better to do so. The key of course is that you're increasing the area you have to defend and making it easier for the enemy to harass/attack you. I just happen to think there is plenty of room to allow for orbital commands sans base as a viable economic investment as well.
People who are saying you will be gas starved have clearly never actually tried farming orbital commands. It's not like you won't have scv's. In fact you can easily have far MORE scv's because every orbital command can build them.
It only takes 6 scvs to maximally harvest gas from a base. You will always have more than enough scv's for gas if you want it. In fact it's easy to get too much gas if you're running lots of bases because the mules give the same mineral income if you're farming or if the OC's are actually at the expo, but the gas starts flooding in for each additional base you take.
Gas is not a problem for this macro technique. Aggression, however, is a huge problem, since your army will be about 500 minerals weaker for each orbital, and won't catch up for about 3 minutes. That's a pretty massive window, and 500 minerals is a pretty significant chunk of firepower if invested in units. And if you're making two command centers in parallel you are shrinking the time window, but greatly deepening how far behind your army will be in that window.
check griffith's replays in original post for answers against fast aggression, remember, ur not playing vs pros, 99% of people are just playing the game for fun(even 2000+) so they r probably be at least baffled and wont react well to it, thus lose.
I can totally see the abusing of this strat, even as a platinum player. Protoss need pylons to power buildings, AND warp units(probably best thing about protoss), zerg need overlords, who can mutate to more useful things, upgrade to drop, and scout, not to mention hide and take care of ur supply.
Terrans however have this little building which is just an annoying nessecity. You have to build it, and apart from supplying "food" and a very basic wallin, its fragile, it takes space and you need to keep it in mind all the time. I mean, it has the ability to lower to the ground, so you can walk over it, or else it would totally cripple your base!
OC energy, thus mules, is constantly regenerating, which means that if the game lasted indefinately, there were enough resources and you could hold off ur opponent, you would always stay ahead at income. With enough OCs, you can have so many mules harvesting, and if you are sup blocked, its no problem, within mere seconds an OC will probably have enough energy to upgrade an existing depot.
Not to mention fewer depots means those pesky mutas have less buildings to feed on, I dont know about you, but I just hate placing down stray depots which mutas can easily pick off.
This backs up OP's "risk factor" which I find very true, if psychology is strategy's first cousin, then risk is their baby:it could go well, but it could as well get ugly. Its not a problem sending a flying OC to set an expansion, but all those scvs walking right in a death trap could be dentrimental to your chances of winning. Summoning mules on an expansion will give you an immediate push to back up ur army, and if the OC gets attacked, it should be fat enough to survive an attack till ur army arrives. With actions like these you gain more confidence, thus making better decisions affecting the outcome to your favor.
All in all, I am going to use this tactic and abuse it, especially griffiths BO, since it worked so well vs zerg and protoss are no problem in my current ladder rankings with iechoic's hellion drop.
I never only said more money sooner is bad, I've talked about both sides and how it does give an advantage and a disadvantage but that I feel the disadvantage out ways the advantage.
Like I already said I weighed both sides and stated that I feel it is more of a disadvantage which is why I'm against it. I do see how the surge of income is beneficial but I don't think that overall it is better than playing without the extra OCs.
Your analysis seemed to indicate confusion regarding economic principles. You were primarily concerned about your income rate, ignoring that your total minerals mined would be superior. Income rate is only important because it indicates how many minerals you are actually receiving. It has no value independent of that fact. I wanted to clarify any possible confusion. If there was none, then there is nothing to worry about.
There are many exceptions to that principle, best example is the lottery, if you take a lump sum you get far less than if you take smaller sums over a few years.
Your example is flawed because it assumes that you'll actually receive fewer total resources if you elect to receive now. In Starcraft 2 the total minerals per base is static. You either receive the 12,000 minerals from that base now or you receive 12,000 minerals at a later time. The former option will always be the superior option if everything else remains the same. This is why it is pointless to save up energy for multiple mules. It will always be better to those have minerals sooner.
But if we're talking SC2 reality, having more minerals now means having less later, and if you get to that point where it's later in the game, you're going to have an issue on your hands. Which I already pointed out with being spread out and the lack of unit efficiency once you reach later into the game (units that you use that extra mineral surge on).
I understand your concern, but it seems misplaced to me. How to best take advantage of additional minerals earlier in the game is a different issue from whether more minerals earlier is superior. If there is truly no way that additional minerals early in the game can help secure a late game advantage, then your argument would have merit. I don't believe that to be case. Worse case scenario the additional minerals can be used to secure expansions for the gas to better improve your unit composition. I'd also like to point out that outside of 200 v 200 supply battles, additional marines to support an attack or provide defense is never a bad thing.
Why is that a mistake? You, the person who began arguing with me never stated when you build your OC, so why would I assume you would only place it during an advantage?
Perhaps this is the root of our disagreement and confusion. My initial post was in response to your critique of this post:
On December 04 2010 11:25 Kennigit wrote: I think a lot of you are missing the point - don't take this as "spawn...make rax, make orbitals, win game". Thats not whats important. What is important is the idea that at certain safe timings, you could add extra OCs (after destroying enemy army when you'd normally expand?) and get a larger advantage.
Very interested to see what top level players can do with this idea.
I have not argued for a particular build, but only for a different way of thinking about the Terran macro mechanic. My only goal has been to suggest that there is a unique and viable way to use this mechanic. An orbital command does not need to be limited to a tool of expansion. Rather it can be thought of as a different type of economic investment. Think of an orbital command not as a base, but rather a type of super SCV. Would you be willing to invest in a 550 minerals (440 minerals adjusted for the supply provided) for a super scv? Attributes of this SCV:
1) Practically invincible as you'd have to destroy the command center, not the SCV itself.
2) Can be immediately sent to any corner of the map.
3) They harvest at 4 times the normal rate of an SCV on an unoccupied patch, or 8 times the rate of the third scv on patch.
4) Its harvesting rate is unaffected by the presence of other scvs.
5) Uses no supply.
I think if this unit were present in the game and labeled as a superior SCV, people would more readily accept its use.
However I did specifically talk about how placing it during an advantage pretty much removes that advantage until the OC begins benefiting you, meaning instead of building on that advantage over and over again you are wiping it and replacing it a bit later once it begins bearing fruit.
This is no different than building and occupying an expansion or really any type of investment you make in the game.
I might be able to just boil my point down to, it is better to take a third and have the two extra gas and less mineral income than to have a higher mineral income and a lower gas income, and that I think this becomes more apparent as the game progresses.
Reasonable argument. It many instances you are probably correct. If one is capable of taking and defending a third, it is probably better to do so. The key of course is that you're increasing the area you have to defend and making it easier for the enemy to harass/attack you. I just happen to think there is plenty of room to allow for orbital commands sans base as a viable economic investment as well.
If you could quote something I said that made you think I was saying that only Income mattered than please do. I believe this entire time I've been saying that I don't think the advantage of having a surge of minerals will give enough benefit to make this OC strategy worth while.
Though the idea is growing on me and I'll try it, I'll post my replays, just a heads up though Terran is my by far worst race and I've played I think about 3-4 games in the past month lol.
The lottery part was mainly to illustrate my point with an example based in reality that just because you get more now doesn't mean it's better in the long run. I'll concede though that yeah the point is moot unless certain circumstances are met, so I'll stop arguing it.
I'm just going to stop arguing that I don't think this can work until I think on it more and till I try it a bit. I still feel as if the investment and faster mining out will out way the advantage the OC strat gives. This was a fun debate though and you made some good points that have made me rethink my stance and want to think on and try it more before continuing to disagree with the strats viability.
I agree on what your saying and how this can be improved but i would have to disagree with you by using this method in 1v1. using this method right now might be good idea but thats because it is something new. i believe anything "New" will throw people off. but how is this any different than powering? anyone can do anything to build a strong economy in early game but will your enemy just let you do whatever? i believe this is depending on who you fight or what skill leve the person is. i mean you can literaly do anything if your enemy is bad. and yes i saw the diamond replays but in those replays the Terran won because he harassed alot with medivac drops. it does not clearly tell you that he beat a diamond player because he spammed 2-3Orbitals in early game.
this is indeed very interesting, but i dont see how this will be used often and good in high level players. this method of getting strong economy is good but if your enemy knows he can do things as well. example. he can take another base, or another example would be MASSIVE powering. if your going to spam 2-3orbitals that means that the enemy can just spam 6-8barracks or gateways in a row without making a single unit( has some units to defend at ramp) then making massive units later on. this type of build is used mostly in fastest in sc1 but there is no reason not to use it if u see ur enemy spamming orbitals with barely any units. I see this shining in a more 3v3-4v4 team games than 1v1.
"the end of supply depots" title is misleading. your definition of this idea has evolved and it is quite clear that this has nothing to do with making less depots. only replacing a standard expansion with several orbitals. as a result, less depots would be required but the whole point is to have a safer more efficient expansion NOT to make less depots. think most of the initial negative feedback is because of this confusing entry point.
well sc1 and sc2 is very different, yes people try to mimic sc1 style and build order. some of them are still good but 3hatch before pool is .. i have to say very funny because 12 14rax can easyly own. like not even funny
On that picture it shows an OC at an expansion with 4 mules mining.
At the top it says: ~800/m/minute
At the bottom it says: This costs: 550 minerals / 0 supply
Are you seriously suggesting this doesn't imply a 550 mineral investment wil get you 800 minerals per minute income? You're seriously not trying to contrast this misleading image with the pictures of saturated Toss and Zerg bases with similar income to make it seem very overpowered?
I'm done as I'm getting really really annoyed, hail the end of the supply depot lol.
Saechiis... I have the pictures, then I have FOUR PARAGRAPHS OF TEXT explaining it!
So, maybe make the pictures reflect reality and leave out the 4 paragraphs of text explaining how the image is misleading? Seems less work for all of us.
Tell you what Sae. I'll think about trying to re-word some of that so that its clearer. But honestly, I put hours into writing that and making the images and shit. And I just wanted to see a few positive posts saying how it was helpful and informative
I haven't even gotten to play today since I've been just editing that post and commenting and shit ;p
On December 05 2010 11:47 ABXG wrote: The mineral income you gain by using OC Farms is insane. The only downside is that you can be vulnerable to early pressure and you will be extremely gas starved. Using this method I was actually able to keep up with the production rates of Zerg and Protoss in games that I would have been crushed in if hadn't using the OC Farm.
I'm glad to hear it ABXG! Feel free to post any replays.
Don't let the negative viewpoints get to you, the updating you've done to it is beautiful, and its a masterwork of theory crafting that i'd love to see become standard and possibly even result in a mule nerf
I never only said more money sooner is bad, I've talked about both sides and how it does give an advantage and a disadvantage but that I feel the disadvantage out ways the advantage.
Like I already said I weighed both sides and stated that I feel it is more of a disadvantage which is why I'm against it. I do see how the surge of income is beneficial but I don't think that overall it is better than playing without the extra OCs.
Your analysis seemed to indicate confusion regarding economic principles. You were primarily concerned about your income rate, ignoring that your total minerals mined would be superior. Income rate is only important because it indicates how many minerals you are actually receiving. It has no value independent of that fact. I wanted to clarify any possible confusion. If there was none, then there is nothing to worry about.
There are many exceptions to that principle, best example is the lottery, if you take a lump sum you get far less than if you take smaller sums over a few years.
Your example is flawed because it assumes that you'll actually receive fewer total resources if you elect to receive now. In Starcraft 2 the total minerals per base is static. You either receive the 12,000 minerals from that base now or you receive 12,000 minerals at a later time. The former option will always be the superior option if everything else remains the same. This is why it is pointless to save up energy for multiple mules. It will always be better to those have minerals sooner.
But if we're talking SC2 reality, having more minerals now means having less later, and if you get to that point where it's later in the game, you're going to have an issue on your hands. Which I already pointed out with being spread out and the lack of unit efficiency once you reach later into the game (units that you use that extra mineral surge on).
I understand your concern, but it seems misplaced to me. How to best take advantage of additional minerals earlier in the game is a different issue from whether more minerals earlier is superior. If there is truly no way that additional minerals early in the game can help secure a late game advantage, then your argument would have merit. I don't believe that to be case. Worse case scenario the additional minerals can be used to secure expansions for the gas to better improve your unit composition. I'd also like to point out that outside of 200 v 200 supply battles, additional marines to support an attack or provide defense is never a bad thing.
Why is that a mistake? You, the person who began arguing with me never stated when you build your OC, so why would I assume you would only place it during an advantage?
Perhaps this is the root of our disagreement and confusion. My initial post was in response to your critique of this post:
On December 04 2010 11:25 Kennigit wrote: I think a lot of you are missing the point - don't take this as "spawn...make rax, make orbitals, win game". Thats not whats important. What is important is the idea that at certain safe timings, you could add extra OCs (after destroying enemy army when you'd normally expand?) and get a larger advantage.
Very interested to see what top level players can do with this idea.
I have not argued for a particular build, but only for a different way of thinking about the Terran macro mechanic. My only goal has been to suggest that there is a unique and viable way to use this mechanic. An orbital command does not need to be limited to a tool of expansion. Rather it can be thought of as a different type of economic investment. Think of an orbital command not as a base, but rather a type of super SCV. Would you be willing to invest in a 550 minerals (440 minerals adjusted for the supply provided) for a super scv? Attributes of this SCV:
1) Practically invincible as you'd have to destroy the command center, not the SCV itself.
2) Can be immediately sent to any corner of the map.
3) They harvest at 4 times the normal rate of an SCV on an unoccupied patch, or 8 times the rate of the third scv on patch.
4) Its harvesting rate is unaffected by the presence of other scvs.
5) Uses no supply.
I think if this unit were present in the game and labeled as a superior SCV, people would more readily accept its use.
However I did specifically talk about how placing it during an advantage pretty much removes that advantage until the OC begins benefiting you, meaning instead of building on that advantage over and over again you are wiping it and replacing it a bit later once it begins bearing fruit.
This is no different than building and occupying an expansion or really any type of investment you make in the game.
I might be able to just boil my point down to, it is better to take a third and have the two extra gas and less mineral income than to have a higher mineral income and a lower gas income, and that I think this becomes more apparent as the game progresses.
Reasonable argument. It many instances you are probably correct. If one is capable of taking and defending a third, it is probably better to do so. The key of course is that you're increasing the area you have to defend and making it easier for the enemy to harass/attack you. I just happen to think there is plenty of room to allow for orbital commands sans base as a viable economic investment as well.
Just a quick note: minerals tied up in mineral patches are worse than unspent minerals in the bank; why? because you 'have them' but you can't use them. Also, if you mine out a base faster and bank it, you can move on to the next one faster, the more minerals you mine, the less your opponent can potential usurp from you; After all, there are a limited amount of minerals shared between you and the enemy, the more you get, the less he gets, and the better off you are. I would build said Super SCV any day.
banking resources as a terran could lead to some cool unit compositions in a 1v1 game... that wouldn't necessarily work otherwise
mining out all the island expands on scrap would be interesting...
has anyone tried to make two armories and mass tanks/hellions+ rine/viking as additions... with this build vs toss? first two units can splash, the other two for AA
90 seconds (normal) = 67.5 faster for duration of a mule
I knew something like this was gonna happen sooner or later when they introduced mules. Remains to be seen though how effectively it can be "abused".
While there is less risk attached to your expos per se, mules are pretty easy to kill. So basically, if your opponent realises what you're doing and starts sniping your mules constantly, you'll be at a huge disadvantage. Killing 4 mules is way easier and faster than killing an equivalent set of SCVs.
Protoss Phoenix or Zerg Mutas for example will have a really easy time picking off the mules wherever you place them. So either you bring an army to defend or risk losing all the mules and thus most if not all of your mineral income. Coupled with the fact that you invested your mins into the OCs and are are thus left with a smaller ground army, not defending the mules will lose you the game easily I believe.
On December 05 2010 23:18 RRjr wrote: I knew something like this was gonna happen sooner or later when they introduced mules. Remains to be seen though how effectively it can be "abused".
While there is less risk attached to your expos per se, mules are pretty easy to kill. So basically, if your opponent realises what you're doing and starts sniping your mules constantly, you'll be at a huge disadvantage. Killing 4 mules is way easier and faster than killing an equivalent set of SCVs.
Protoss Phoenix or Zerg Mutas for example will have a really easy time picking off the mules wherever you place them. So either you bring an army to defend or risk losing all the mules and thus most if not all of your mineral income. Coupled with the fact that you invested your mins into the OCs and are are thus left with a smaller ground army, not defending the mules will lose you the game easily I believe.
the depot barracks thing they added means most people would have a wall quite early and you don't get vision of flying mules over your screen anymore ( enemy not supposed to see them and fixed )
On December 05 2010 23:18 RRjr wrote: While there is less risk attached to your expos per se, mules are pretty easy to kill. So basically, if your opponent realises what you're doing and starts sniping your mules constantly, you'll be at a huge disadvantage. Killing 4 mules is way easier and faster than killing an equivalent set of SCVs.
No, this is a wrong idea, the point is that the mule was going to die on itself, and the SCV wasn't. Assuming that you for instance keep expanding and never over-saturate, one SCV will give you a set mineral income ad in-finitum. By killing that SCV you have permanently taken that away until the end off time, you don't 'replace' SCV's or probes, because you always produce them non-stop anyway. An SCV killed is an irreperairable loss, I mean, protoss can perhaps decide to chrono them then, but for terran, it is gone forever.
Killing a mule I'd say is always a bad decision in favour of killing an SCV. Killing a mule costs the opponent a bounded and fixed price, nothing more. An SCV will keep generating income for the remainder of the game if not killed, assuming here for sake of simplicity that you don't ever mine out the map.
That's basically related to the mentioned vacuum in this thread, the mule is not to be compared with the SCV, the OC itself is, like an SCV, it's an initial investment that will keep returning forever if not killed.
However, I would like to point some thing out to the OP here if we're looking at that, a single mule mines as fast as 4.5 SCV's in an ideal case, an oribtal can continuously calldown mules as it happens to regen 50 energy every 90 seconds. So basically the cost / return ratio of an orbital is significantly lower than an SCV. The return is 4.5 times as high, but an orbital command costs 11 SCV's.
Of course, this is minus the supply depot so let's say 8.5 SCV"s, that's still a lot higher.
Another poibnt that comes into factor is that it has more hp than that many SCV's, and thus is less easily lost, and is less exposed in the field, and can oversaturate.
On December 05 2010 23:03 Cyber_Cheese wrote: Don't let the negative viewpoints get to you, the updating you've done to it is beautiful, and its a masterwork of theory crafting that i'd love to see become standard and possibly even result in a mule nerf
Thanks! Nice to hear positive feedback, especially after all the work in rewriting the top post.
On December 05 2010 23:03 Cyber_Cheese wrote: Just a quick note: minerals tied up in mineral patches are worse than unspent minerals in the bank; why? because you 'have them' but you can't use them. Also, if you mine out a base faster and bank it, you can move on to the next one faster, the more minerals you mine, the less your opponent can potential usurp from you; After all, there are a limited amount of minerals shared between you and the enemy, the more you get, the less he gets, and the better off you are. I would build said Super SCV any day.
That's true. Minerals tied in patches are much worse than minerals in the bank. The points you raise are all true. Another major point is that you need to defend minerals tied up in a patch, you don't have to defend minerals in the bank. That idea is really one of the key points in the whole value of OC Farming.
On December 06 2010 04:35 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: Killing a mule I'd say is always a bad decision in favour of killing an SCV. Killing a mule costs the opponent a bounded and fixed price, nothing more. An SCV will keep generating income for the remainder of the game if not killed, assuming here for sake of simplicity that you don't ever mine out the map.
This is actually a really interesting point. I might edit this into top. The decision between killing a mule or killing an SCV depends on the following:
The more workers you think you can kill at once, the more valuable killing SCVs is. The fewer workers you can kill at once, the more valuable killing mules is.
The reason comes down to the amount of time required to replace the workers. Let's imagine the 4 mules vs 24 workers scenario. Both have a similar income. But killing the 4 mules results in (like you said) a fixed mineral cost - exactly how much depends on how much energy they have left. Killing the workers is not really infinite (because of saturation) - the real value in killing SCVs depends on how long it takes to replace them. The more SCVs you can kill in a single burst, the longer it will take to replace that lost income.
Let's imagine you are on two base, and both are saturated. Someone kills a single SCV. It will take them 20 seconds to replace that SCV and return to full income. On the other hand, if someone kills 10 SCVs, it will take 200 seconds (divided by the number of cc's building) in order to replace all that income (plus the cost of the individual SCVs). That 200 seconds of lost income is huge.
There is a formula to determine the exact point where killing MULES is better than SCVs. But the rough rule of thumb is probably: if you can kill 1 or 2 workers, kill mules. If you think you can kill 4+ workers kill SCVs.
On December 06 2010 04:35 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: However, I would like to point some thing out to the OP here if we're looking at that, a single mule mines as fast as 4.5 SCV's in an ideal case, an oribtal can continuously calldown mules as it happens to regen 50 energy every 90 seconds. So basically the cost / return ratio of an orbital is significantly lower than an SCV. The return is 4.5 times as high, but an orbital command costs 11 SCV's.
Of course, this is minus the supply depot so let's say 8.5 SCV"s, that's still a lot higher.
Another poibnt that comes into factor is that it has more hp than that many SCV's, and thus is less easily lost, and is less exposed in the field, and can oversaturate.
What you say here is half true. Building SCVs is always better than building OCs - IF - you are not close to saturation. The key idea being that oversaturation more so than raw mining income is the actual value of the OC.
0:00 Start buildings CC (400 minerals invested) 1:40 CC finished, start upgrading to OC (550 minerals invested) 2:15 OC finished, calldown first MULE 3:45 first MULE runs out of energy, calldown second (270 minerals gathered) 4:35 Start buildings second CC (950 minerals invested) 5:15 second MULE runs out of energy, calldown third (540 minerals gathered) 6:15 second CC finished, start upgrading to OC (1100 minerals invested) 6:45 third MULE runs out of energy, calldown fourth (810 minerals gathered) 6:50 second OC finished, calldown fifth MULE 7:40 Start buildings third CC (1500 minerals invested) 8:15 fourth MULE runs out of energy, calldown sixth 8:20 fifht MULE runs out of energy, calldown seventh (1350 minerals gathered) 8:50 Start buildings fourth CC (1900 minerals invested) 9:20 third CC finished, start upgrading to OC (2050 minerals invested) 9:45 third OC finished, calldown eighth MULE 9:45 sixth MULE runs out of energy, calldown nineth 9:50 seventh MULE runs out of energy, calldown tenth (1890 minerals gathered)
10:20 MULES gathered 2160 minerals! You get back initial investment!
Now profit!
10:30 fourth CC finished, start upgrading to OC (2100 minerals invested)
So with this build, after you invest initial 400 minerals, you get them back after 10 minutes and 20 seconds. After that you gain 4 MULES (640-720 minerals/min income) and 44 extra supply. Enjoy!
I really dont see this build viable at any level, its huge (8 marines) investment that pays for it in more than 10 minutes... After that you get some eco boost but 10 min is way too long.
Its kinda same theory like saying that Protoss whos not using Chrono boost for anything besides Probes can have around 67 Probes at the time when Terran has 50. And this Chrono Boost effect would result into 720 minerals income compareable or higher than what 4 MULEs give.
I feel like if you are doing this strategy, you should play standard for a while (about 10 minutes), before beginning to mass OC. If you start with the massing, you are left very vulnerable to a timing attack. It seems like it has great potential, and I would love to see a pro player use it.
On December 06 2010 12:21 Sek-Kuar wrote: Timeline of this build:
0:00 Start buildings CC (400 minerals invested) 1:40 CC finished, start upgrading to OC (550 minerals invested) 2:15 OC finished, calldown first MULE 3:45 first MULE runs out of energy, calldown second (270 minerals gathered) 4:35 Start buildings second CC (950 minerals invested) 5:15 second MULE runs out of energy, calldown third (540 minerals gathered) 6:15 second CC finished, start upgrading to OC (1100 minerals invested) 6:45 third MULE runs out of energy, calldown fourth (810 minerals gathered) 6:50 second OC finished, calldown fifth MULE 7:40 Start buildings third CC (1500 minerals invested) 8:15 fourth MULE runs out of energy, calldown sixth 8:20 fifht MULE runs out of energy, calldown seventh (1350 minerals gathered) 8:50 Start buildings fourth CC (1900 minerals invested) 9:20 third CC finished, start upgrading to OC (2050 minerals invested) 9:45 third OC finished, calldown eighth MULE 9:45 sixth MULE runs out of energy, calldown nineth 9:50 seventh MULE runs out of energy, calldown tenth (1890 minerals gathered)
10:20 MULES gathered 2160 minerals! You get back initial investment!
Now profit!
10:30 fourth CC finished, start upgrading to OC (2100 minerals invested)
So with this build, after you invest initial 400 minerals, you get them back after 10 minutes and 20 seconds. After that you gain 4 MULES (640-720 minerals/min income) and 44 extra supply. Enjoy!
I really dont see this build viable at any level, its huge (8 marines) investment that pays for it in more than 10 minutes... After that you get some eco boost but 10 min is way too long.
Its kinda same theory like saying that Protoss whos not using Chrono boost for anything besides Probes can have around 67 Probes at the time when Terran has 50. And this Chrono Boost effect would result into 720 minerals income compareable or higher than what 4 MULEs give.
Actually, you don't build a "4th" OC, you start out with one CC, so that's 400 Minerals less invested into this build, you only pay 150 for the OC Upgrade. Secondly, the 2nd OC is used for the Expansion fairly early so it pays for itself fairly quickly from saturating the Natural to alleviate diminishing returns resulting from SCV Oversaturation at the main. Then consider that each OC is worth 1.375 Supply depots or, a 137.5 Mineral savings on Depots... they pay for themselves a lot quicker than 10:20. Also, if you aren't so afraid of it being scouted, you can place one or both of your extra OC's in a slightly more efficient position for some mineral deposits to quicken your gathering of some mineral patches in your main or natural (You'll know this is the case if the SCV's decide to go to the extra OC rather than your main OC)... though this particular benefit is map dependent.
And who doesn't love watching a baneling bust on your first Supply Depot only for the zerg to find that a big ass OC is beyond that?
Dude I love the idea but you still haven't updated your caption on the OP. Your entire argument is that you are getting 5 orbital commands to be able to constantly earn from 5 mules which equals 1 saturated expansion, but you say in the OP that a saturated expansion's worth of SCV's can be replaced by one orbital command that costs 550 minerals and 0 supply, and have a picture of 4 mules which is not quite enough. This is incorrect. You are getting 5 of them which costs 2550 minerals.
Trump was trying this strat on this stream last night. I haven't read the entire thread, so I don't know the intricacies, but he appeared to do ok with it. Basically he opened 1-1-1 marine-tank-viking, then expand. He'd build an additional OC in his main and natural. He'd kind of play a normal game from their on out, but each time he'd take an expansion, he would build two OC's instead of one. Eventually, he'd get a third up so he was at 6 OCs. This is where things would get a little nuts and he'd start dropping like 4 CCs or 6 rax at a time. He lost several games, but I think every game he lost, he was floating 3k in some cases 4k minerals. I think this strat could really work, its just figuring out the correct execution, which could be really tricky.
I think it's an interesting strategy but not very feasible at the early stage of the game. Because you are investing so much in CC/OC, you have very few units,if your opponent is as passive as you,he will take over the map with expansions as well, if he is aggresive you will get Jinrolled!!!
The more logical approach to me, would be to make 1 extra OC at your main after 2 barracks,then when you expand to your natural lift off and use it while building a 3rd OC in your base and so on,so you always have 1 OC ahead that can be used to immediatly MULE up the current or the next expansion.It will give you a good boost with a smaller risk of failure.
So far 4/5 with this on the ladder, 2 wins being versus terran, one vs zerg, and one vs protoss.
Depending on the situation, I've made the the first CC quite early (under 20 supply).
If unscouted or not dealt with correctly, this seems quite powerful at this moment in the metagame, at least until their opponent realizes what's going on.
We all know how difficult it is to beat Z late game. Also, how common banelings will pull down any supply depots you had used to wall-in near start.
So, let's say your army is maxed late game vs max late game Z army. You send 1 bases SCVs into the enemies, possibly killing a few banelings. Then you have about ~20 supply more units onto the zerg if you have 4 extra OC's. Then let's say and zerg are one 3 bases. Send in 2 base worth of SCVs. That's ~40 extra food. If you have ~8 OCs late game.... thats 80 Food and 8 mules. You can have 2 bases minned with JUST Mules?
You will have 40 supply vers the zerg late game. I'm sure that you will beat the Z late game army. Even if he re-macros army before you can beat him, the extra fighting he has to do should be enough for you to also remacro.
This is all theory and based on extremely good play which I don't think any1 can pull of right now or maybe ever. However seeing OptimumsPrimes Play makes me believe it is possible.
Whenever I watch Jinro play I feel like he is doing the funday monday where you have to expand every 4 minutes. He's like clockwork. My favorite Terran to watch. Not exactly what you are doing but similar. Nada should try this heh.
Tried this today against a 1600 zerg (i'm 1k ish terran). Granted, the guy I was playing wasn't that great (looking at the replays) but the build is promising. Not used to a macro build on the terran, but I was able to pump out so many units in a short period of time with 6+ rax in 10 min mark.
The first 5 rines are pretty crucial. I was able to take out zerg's queen and a few drones. You think that building CC's early will make you not produce units... but I just kept pumping out of the 2 raxes until my 3rd OC finished and added on 4 more rax after.
This build is damn good if the game stretches out to later game. Tried it on a few 4v4s today. Unless your team is retarded and gets taken out early, this build replenishes your army so fast that the enemy can't catch up. Also, this build alone made it possible for me to repel 2 or 3 pronged attacks as I was pumping units like no other.
Another advantage was the fact that you can expo much easier. once your main and/or expo runs out, I was able to simply float my OC anywhere and mine FAST. Mule mining gold was amazing.
On December 05 2010 23:18 RRjr wrote: While there is less risk attached to your expos per se, mules are pretty easy to kill. So basically, if your opponent realises what you're doing and starts sniping your mules constantly, you'll be at a huge disadvantage. Killing 4 mules is way easier and faster than killing an equivalent set of SCVs.
No, this is a wrong idea, the point is that the mule was going to die on itself, and the SCV wasn't. Assuming that you for instance keep expanding and never over-saturate, one SCV will give you a set mineral income ad in-finitum. By killing that SCV you have permanently taken that away until the end off time, you don't 'replace' SCV's or probes, because you always produce them non-stop anyway. An SCV killed is an irreperairable loss, I mean, protoss can perhaps decide to chrono them then, but for terran, it is gone forever.
Killing a mule I'd say is always a bad decision in favour of killing an SCV. Killing a mule costs the opponent a bounded and fixed price, nothing more. An SCV will keep generating income for the remainder of the game if not killed, assuming here for sake of simplicity that you don't ever mine out the map. ...
In a normal game, that may be true. But against somebody making lots of extra OCs, unless it's very early in the game, they are presumably not going to be producing SCVs out of ALL of their CCs non stop. When you have 5 or 6 CCs fairly early in the game, I have to imagine that you arn't going to have all of them churning out SCVs constantly, or you would end up with no supply for an army before long.
If you are going to have CCs not always producing, then the cost of a dead SCV really is 50 minerals plus the loss of mining before it was replaced. The whole "well you are still an SCV short because the new worker could have been "additional" rather than "replacement" doesn't apply if you have spare SCV production capacity.
On December 06 2010 04:35 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote:
On December 05 2010 23:18 RRjr wrote: While there is less risk attached to your expos per se, mules are pretty easy to kill. So basically, if your opponent realises what you're doing and starts sniping your mules constantly, you'll be at a huge disadvantage. Killing 4 mules is way easier and faster than killing an equivalent set of SCVs.
No, this is a wrong idea, the point is that the mule was going to die on itself, and the SCV wasn't. Assuming that you for instance keep expanding and never over-saturate, one SCV will give you a set mineral income ad in-finitum. By killing that SCV you have permanently taken that away until the end off time, you don't 'replace' SCV's or probes, because you always produce them non-stop anyway. An SCV killed is an irreperairable loss, I mean, protoss can perhaps decide to chrono them then, but for terran, it is gone forever.
Killing a mule I'd say is always a bad decision in favour of killing an SCV. Killing a mule costs the opponent a bounded and fixed price, nothing more. An SCV will keep generating income for the remainder of the game if not killed, assuming here for sake of simplicity that you don't ever mine out the map. ...
In a normal game, that may be true. But against somebody making lots of extra OCs, unless it's very early in the game, they are presumably not going to be producing SCVs out of ALL of their CCs non stop. When you have 5 or 6 CCs fairly early in the game, I have to imagine that you arn't going to have all of them churning out SCVs constantly, or you would end up with no supply for an army before long.
If you are going to have CCs not always producing, then the cost of a dead SCV really is 50 minerals plus the loss of mining before it was replaced. The whole "well you are still an SCV short because the new worker could have been "additional" rather than "replacement" doesn't apply if you have spare SCV production capacity.
Nonsense, 194 SCVs + 1BC All-In is the true goal of this build, but everyone loses to its Marine Harassment before we can actually achieve it!
I can see this idea being used more in the future on big maps as people get better at defending early harass.
With earlier scouting options by protoss, and the additional scans you can get with more orbitals, I think that macro styles will get more and more popular and this idea will get better and better. What I think would be a good addition is not doing 4 orbitals on 1 base, but maybe 4 orbitals on 2 base and going back and forth between supply depots and supply drops. Mules helps you mine faster, but supply drop essentially is 100 free minerals. I can see a build that goes something like depot, orbital, supply drop, orbital, depot supply drop, orbital, depot, supply drop, and then mules only after that. Maybe getting the first mule to help you get out a bunker and 4 marines. There are a lot of possibilities, but i think the idea of "If you can get away with it, make orbitals" is something that will become standard. Unlike zerg that need to expand and saturate bases in order to even have production, i can see terran as being the mobile expansion race. Basically you sit on 2 bases most of the game making units to pressure and making orbitals. When you have time, you take an orbital to an expansion and mine it out as fast as possible, and then move it. Terran end game might be about having 1 normal base, and 2-3 mobile bases with only mules.
I don't think Mules are overpowered, but i can see this eventually causing problems if someone figures out a way to exploit it.
This type of theory-crafting is going to get Terran nerfed even more. Look how the OP rewrites his whole post to highlight a seemingly overpowered macro mechanic that no other race has. Now the MULE is going to get nerfed too, what's next? Terran can't lift off buildings? Ridiculous.
What is... I don't even... This is absolutely ridiculous. The early meta game is too harsh. Those ccs need to be pay off much more quicker. Goes along the same reasoning of the value of 1 scv at 30 food is invaluable compared to 120. This simply will not work in higher levels. Only work if left alone uncontested for 16 min... But what REAL game does that... Competent players WILL scout this either by what they see or what they don't see. Even if this somehow works, you would be so behind in tech, and upgrades.
Switching to OC late game is very viable however, as minerals get pretty ridiculous. But one needs to get to late game first...
Far forward expansions are usually Planetary Fortresses, so you have your extra orbitals mule mining those expos with little cost. A few SCV's there mining gas. The SCV's can hide inside the Fortress if under pressure while the mules repair. Seems good.
On December 10 2010 07:45 Kudo wrote: What is... I don't even... This is absolutely ridiculous. The early meta game is too harsh. Those ccs need to be pay off much more quicker. Goes along the same reasoning of the value of 1 scv at 30 food is invaluable compared to 120. This simply will not work in higher levels. Only work if left alone uncontested for 16 min... But what REAL game does that... Competent players WILL scout this either by what they see or what they don't see. Even if this somehow works, you would be so behind in tech, and upgrades.
Switching to OC late game is very viable however, as minerals get pretty ridiculous. But one needs to get to late game first...
I have to be rude here. What do you mean higher level? Top 200? Pro level? Or just plain top 2% of diamond?
There has been submitted replays to this thread and the 4OC thread, of builds incorporating at least 2 fast command centers versus zergs at the diamond 2k+. So please clarify.
P.S. What is "the early meta game" are you trying to just say the early game?
Whats nice is that if Terran ever gets mech to be viable again and we get better maps, i can see a mid to l8 game mass repair push followed by mass Orbitals to replace your miners. Since Mech is so mineral heavy im pretty sure you could spam 5-6 orbitals in no time. Plus the mass repair mech push would be super hard to stop.
Or Terran could just sack the workers and keep building his army resulting in a generally bigger army then Protoss. and Zerg(For zerg i think it won't be to game breaking because they can spam larva and production Protoss on the other hand i don't know)
On December 10 2010 06:34 SKaREO wrote: This type of theory-crafting is going to get Terran nerfed even more. Look how the OP rewrites his whole post to highlight a seemingly overpowered macro mechanic that no other race has. Now the MULE is going to get nerfed too, what's next? Terran can't lift off buildings? Ridiculous.
Does the OP work for Blizzard balance team? Why would his "theory-crafting" have any value in what gets nerfed and buffed? IF what he discovered is pure rubbish, why the heck would Blizzard even listen to it and risk ruining their huge franchise? However, if people are trying out his method and find it to be way overpowering, then why shouldn't it get nerfed???
I really don't understand the complaint here. Please think before you type.
On December 02 2010 17:12 30to1 wrote: So this thread has sort of exploded and it seems that it only took two days for this to (some degree according to the replies) enter the meta. The Artosis/TeamLiquid tweets really pushed it over the edge. Over the next few weeks people will use it, test it, and the community will evaluate its overall worth by ... trying it in games and either winning or losing. So good luck, I hope this was worth while, and here is the information that I can help give you guys while trying it out.
NOTE - Based on most of the responses I don't think people got many of the reasons this is so good. So I've simplified the shit out of it and focused on what I think the long term less gimmicky use of this is. For those curious about the original numbers that lead me to this post - see spoiler at end.
Why is the OC special?
In the past, there were only three ways to generate income.
SC2 has given us a fourth income generating unit. It is the only one of its kind.
The MULE itself might be the little thingie that carries minerals around, but the thing thats actually special is not the MULE, its the OC itself. The reason? Oversaturation and the fact that the MULEs themselves are renewable for no mineral cost after your initial 550 investment (in other words, the MULEs themselves are disposable).
Every Orbital Command you build should provide you will a income of ~180/m per minute every minute. It does not matter how many workers are harvesting and it does not matter where you build or position that OC. It can still generate this income as long as you have a base, any base, anywhere, within walking distance of a mineral patch. It does not matter if a hellion fried a mule 5 minutes ago, it does not matter if you have 0 minerals and have nothing but a single OC. Every 90s an OC will bank 50 energy you can use to place a mule anywhere on the map. It doesn't even matter if you forgot to get your minerals for a few minutes - the OC will bank 4 income boosts if you forgot about it for a while, or if you just want to give yourself a sudden burst of 540/m per minute over the next 90 seconds.
Do not think of an OC as you would anything else in SC, it is fundimentally different. The OC is itself an income generating structure. Every 90 seconds an OC will generate you a little mechanical income boost (regardless of where it is or how many workers you have). Note: because OCs generate 50 energy at ~85 seconds there is a period of overlap between two mules, although I constantly cite OC income at ~180/min its closer to ~200 - OC income is higher than MULE income.
OCs are really good.
Can 4 OCs alone be better than a saturated expansion?
Yes. 4OCs will generate an income equal to a saturated expansion but there is more to it. Let's compare the options for generating 800/m/minute (worker costs are food adjusted @12.5 - no adjustment was applied for supply value of base).
~800/m/minute
This costs 1900 minerals / 24 supply
~800/m/minute
This costs 1800 minerals / 24 supply
~800/m/minute
This costs 550 minerals / 0 supply
Admittedly, this is a favorable oversimplification depending on your perspective, to get those 4 mules working constantly you need 4 OCs. With a bit of a discount considering you start with one CC, getting 3 addl OCs will cost you 1390 (food adjusted cost @12.5 per food not including first CC in food discount or build cost). That doesn't seem that great, sure you save a 400-500 minerals - but not game breaking.
The difference is in exposure and vulnerability. Look at those three bases and the costs under them. Thats how many minerals you're risking on your expansion. The real cost of an expansion is not the 3-400 minerals to build the base, the real cost is in the 1500 minerals to build the workers and the eight minutes it takes to replace them if they die.
Because an OC/MULE only expansion is nearly risk free compared to other bases and they fly you can take risks with them that you never would have dreamed of with a real expansion. The reality is, if a big threat drops and stims on your door and kills all your mules, it sucks, it hurts, and yeah, it might lose you a game. But often, you can just lift the thing, stick it somewhere else, call more mules and be just fine.
OC Farming is superior to a normal expansion since it carries less Risk. That means you can be more aggressive about 'expanding' to vulnerable areas - including gold expos or corner locations.
How does this fit into Supply Depots?
Every time you build a supply depot, you spend 100 minerals. Once built, those minerals are lost forever. They're just a burden and they die easy. A OC provides you with 137 minerals worth of supply, has a ton of hitpoints and unlike a supply depot will pay for itself in 3:20.
In an ideal world, you should absolutely never build a supply depot.
The reality is that you will have to build at least a couple supply depots in order to live long enough for an OC to pay for itself (I got a little over excited with my first post ;D). That said, every time you build a depot, you should be aware of the fact that those minerals could have been better spent on more OCs. That in the long run those OCs will catapult you ahead of your opponent.
Keep that in mind with every supply depot you make. Each one is a delay in OC Farming, the long term benefit in opting for OCs over Depots (where feasible) is very real.
How effective can OC Farming be?
Because your OC Farm can be very defensively positioned (you can actually use the OCs to wall off), OC Farming allows you the additional income of an expansion without the additional vulnerability. Because OCs can fly - they also give you tremendous flexibility in repositioning your current MULE fest.
There's a tremendous amount of flexibility in how this can be used. I think that it should be strong incentive to take a natural early and I predict terran FE may become really popular. With it, you should be able to produce the income of three or four bases much faster and much safer than any other race. Your MULE income off of the main and FE alone will be half of a third, and that should be a big appeal.
Some people may try to use a 4-8 OC mega push and play mass macro style. Frankly, I think this could be viable mid or late game. Sure you will lose at cost, but you can realistically double your opponents income so just throw 60 marines at him every minute, most will die, but your income will replace losses faster, and because you can reposition your expos at will with low risk you can mine shit out with less concern.
Or you could just play fairly standard and is drop a couple extra OCs if it looks like the game will go past 10 minutes. You should start to dramatically pull ahead in income compared to any other race with considerably less supply used in workers and with dramatically risk.
As this develops, I'll add more edits with notes, builds, replays, etc.
Some Replays and comments about games posted around page 18...
1v1 TvZ a better replay, the zerg(me) could have gotten better tech units rather tahn mutas. probably infestors. shows how fast a terran can produce and waves of waves of attacks. I could've micro'd better as well. http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/112219-1v1-terran-zerg-metalopolis
Please note that we knew what the terran was doing, and try'd things to stop it. We did not have any rules just the Z or P trying to stop it.
On December 04 2010 10:50 Bixs wrote: Here are some replays:
On December 04 2010 20:17 Dsn4001 wrote: Played against someone going mass orbital commands. You'd notice that even though I was always ahead in workers by at least 8. His income is always higher than mine except at the end game.
Problem was the map really, jungle basin is not best map for this since expansion besides the natural are limited.
If you have replays - feel free to PM me and I will include them, win or lose, top diamond or low bronze.
gongryong has put together a little FAQ - his comments mostly revolve around helping to clarify the first version of this post - which was much more extreme and focused on a more committed early OC all in - but I thought his points were still good. If he (or anyone else) wants to update or contribute to this, please feel free to PM.
FAQ
1. Please summarize what is this strategy/build all about? + Show Spoiler +
(Over the duration of this thread, this strategy has evolve a bit thanks to those willing to spend time and energy to try it out and prove/disprove it.) At this point, this build is about going standard early game as you see fit, and after that switching to mass OC for supply and mules and inevst in a mule heavy economy to support your army. With mass mules, you can sacrifice some of your scvs in order to get to an army heavy max 200/200 (some say 180/20) scenario
2. Do you mean i DO NOT have to build depots AT ALL? + Show Spoiler +
The idea of this strategy is to reduce dependence on depots as food supply and instead get it from OCs, especially mid-late game.
3. So you just build the initial depot and spam OC all the way? + Show Spoiler +
That was one of the initial ideas. But early tests indicate that you need standard depot build early game for the following reasons: - at 400m and longer build time, OCs are not optimal early game - you need early game depots to support first batch of scvs and early army
By midgame, or once you have a stable economy and decent army, you can SWITCH to this "build" by forgetting about depots and spamming OCs for mules (see details above for the figures on mule-heavy economy).
You will still need scvs particularly early game (per standard) until it is safe to switch to mule-based economy. At this point, you will need less scvs, mainly for gas harvest, repair, and building. Reducing scvs is an essential part of this strategy since it will give you a bigger percentage of army in a 200/200 max out scenario vs others.
If you proceed with your game rushing to this strategy, you will clearly have to skimp on early army. An opponent who scouts this might react to this aggressively with early pressure or might all-in against you. this could be a major problem. Or, you could simply go standard early to mid game, 2 basing preferably, and switch to this strategy, then you could see the potential of this strategy. Moreover, some point that mules only address the mineral aspect of your economy, what about the gas? I see this a general economy issue and not particular to this strategy - meaning mule or not, terran or any other race, one has to always mind gas harvesting. you will have to save some scvs for gas mining.
At this point, this strategy belongs to everyone, including you. If you think this is impossible, you are welcome ignore this. But IF you argue against it, please be kind enough to post a rational argument and not just a blanket denial. Otherwise, try it out yourself, experiment with it, mix it up, do anything to prove by your account if this build is viable or not. By then, you can post any argument you want with the benefit of personal experience.
Original post for those curious as to how this got started...
The goal of this thread is honestly, to come up with a game breaking technique for terran by maxing out abuse of mules. How does this end supply depots? We'll get to this soon.
I'll be stating a lot of stuff, backed up by with rough math. But I admit this is all theory craft at this point. I'll be refining this as we go - but I wanted to share my conclusions. If anyone is interested in helping me figure out how to absolutely abuse the ideas that follow - please contribute.
I came away pretty shocked at how incredibly broken mules are. I broke out excel and ran some calculations. The key point is I came away with is that once built, it takes around 3:20 for terran to pay for an orbital command plus 10 scvs (if people are curious I can share the xls).
The other key number is 4 orbital commands. That's the number of orbital commands required to call down enough mules to mine ~800 minerals per minute (the same as a fully saturated base).
Mules
Mules are incredible. So incredible that I think they may legitimately break the game if used to their fullest potential. An orbital command can put down a mule every ~85 seconds. A mule lasts 90 seconds and mines 180 minerals per minute. For comparison, 3 scvs mining a mineral patch will produce ~100 minerals per minute (about 40/35/25 if mining the same patch according to my tests). So in one sense a mule comes pretty close to being worth 5-6 scvs. A great ability that you can constantly use.
But the part where mules become broken is their ability to oversaturate a mineral patch. Every base in SC2 has 8 patches. In order to get 6 SCVs to mine 200 minerals a second, it takes up 2 mineral patches. A fully saturated base will mine 800 minerals per minute and require 24 scvs.
Mules on the other hand can mine 180 minerals a second regardless of how many other workers are there. With 24 scvs and 4 mules mining at a single base you should be able to mine roughly 1520 minerals a second. That's the same as two fully saturated expansions.
So 4 mules is roughly equal to a fully saturated base...so what?
4 Mules are much better than a fully saturated expansion.
In order to put together a fully saturated base, it costs money. You need to build the command center, and you need to build 24 workers, those 24 workers need to eat - so you also gotta build supply depots.
The true cost of an SCV is 50 minerals plus 1 supply (using a supply depot, a supply is worth 12.5 minerals) - so an SCV is costs 62.5 minerals. 24 of these will cost you 1500 minerals + 400 for the command center.
So it costs 1900 minerals to build and fully saturate an expansion - the CC itself is only ~25% of the total cost - the vast majority is in the workers and supply.
Why does this matter? 1900 minerals is a lot. It costs you that much to take a natural and fully saturate - this is why FE is pretty risky. Taking a quick third and fully saturating both bases will cost you 3800 minerals. Thats a metric shit ton. In this game, its generally not economically feasible to saturate a third base before your main is nearly mined out because of the cost in workers. Additionally, because workers take up supply, building 90 workers to fully saturate 3 bases will leave you with a paper army compared to someone 2 basing. Chances are pretty good, you won't hold that third (we see this happen time and again with zergs who take a third as a response to a FE - they simply do not have enough money to saturate and build any remote defense).
So most of the time, we all have to be content with a max income of around 1500 minerals per minute (2 fully saturated bases). It's almost impossible to exceed this (aside from golds, which we'll ignore for a bit).
Mules break all those rules
So here is where we finally get to the interesting shit. Mules are the only unit in SC that can completely break the above. A terran player capable of rolling out 4 mules on 2 fully saturated bases will mine ~2200 minerals per minute. This is realistically more than any other race can do. If you get really ambitious, a terran player capable of rolling out 8 mules on two bases will mine ~3000 minerals per minute. Thats equal to 4 fully saturated bases. With an income that high, you should be able to produce a marine every second.
But it's not possible to get a steady stream of 8 mules!
Well. Not if you play conventionally but I think that in order to play terran to its maximum potential, you should not play remotely like any other race, nor should you play as the designers intended, because AS TERRAN YOU SHOULD WORK HARD TO NEVER BUILD A SUPPLY DEPOT.
Well. Ok. You need that first one to get a barraks. But lets ignore that first depot. Let me say it again...
AS TERRAN YOU WORK HARD TO NEVER BUILD A SUPPLY DEPOT.
Command centers are always economically better for supply. Why? Because supply depots suck. They're just lost minerals AND they get killed easy leaving you supply blocked. If you can possibly arrange a way to afford it, you should ALWAYS BUILD COMMAND CENTERS FOR FOOD. Why? Because in ADDITION TO BUILDING WORKERS FASTER, THEY GIVE YOU MULES AND ALLOW YOU TO OVERSATURATE.
A command center gives you 11 food, this is worth 137 minerals in supply (depot gives 8 @ 100 minerals). The actual cost of a command center is really 263 minerals, the orbital is another 150. Using ONLY MULES the orbital command will pay for itself in about 3:20 (550 minerals) - a single mule will pay for the command center using its food adjusted cost in 90 seconds. After this, unlike a supply depot the orbital command will begin to improve your income. Dramatically. If you can get 2 orbital commands, the mules alone will entirely pay for a constant stream of additional orbital commands. What does this mean? Well. It means that you could have 8 orbital commands in around 9 minutes, and an income of 3,000 minerals per minute (equivilant to 4 fully saturated bases). Obviously, it won't always be possible to avoid building depots.But the point is that this is something you should try very hard to avoid. A supply depot does not improve your income. Orbital commands do. Two will completely pay for a third in mule income alone, 3 will give you 540 minerals / minute, allowing you to continue pumping out additional CCs in mass (paid for by mules alone).
So let me just review. Using your main, and your natural, you can have an income equvalent to 4 fully saturated bases. This mechanic is absolutely unparalleled by anything the other two races have -- and we haven't even started looking into planetary fortresses as incredibly cost effective defense yet.
Theorycraft I admit completely that this thread is theorycrafting at its best. But I wanted to put this post up so that I could eventually take credit for the inevitable nerf on Mules . I'll be adding builds, replays as I have time.
In the mean time, please feel free to add suggestions, think it out, try builds. The best I did was a 14 CC 15 rax with my 4th orbital at ~ 6 minutes. I walled off the natural with CCs and 2 bunkers. I had an income of 2200-2400 at 9 minutes. I'm sure this is viable.
EDIT:
Griffith has posted a build with high diamond replays showing that this is viable.
EDIT 2: 12/2/10 - I want to claim the phrase "Farming OCs" as this is essentially what this is all about.
Please... please please! there have been numerous posts about "omg mass OC build can rape"... Honestly people are tired of this terran qq fest... all TL forums are now is "marines are OP" "Mass OC's are OP" "Mule's are OP" Let's stopd these qq fests and become constructive and talk about balance.
1) Mass building CC's is never going to win you high competition games.... good opponents scout and respond
2) Command Centers take a long time to produce - compound with the OC tech time - thats a lot of time for opponents to counter you
3) SCVs have to be sacrificed for a period to build army production buildings - the balance is toss can drop down their warp in building and reuse that probe - zerg have to build one tech building and then they can pump ALL their units from one building instead of 3 different ones
4) If you have ever played terran - mineral overproduction is so common that mass OC's to a point become absolutely pointless
Basically is anyone else sick of Terran QQ - terran is NOT easy mode... its heavy micro intensive from base building to army movement, in all honesty the mule is a really good solution to a difficult micro intensive race - if you've ever played terran (not laddered up on gimmicks) it has a very high learning curve
I could see OCs being a nice mineral dump in the mid and lategame, but not much more than that. The only thing you can really build with tons of minerals are Marines and Hellions. Sure you could 12 rax 4 fact with Reactors with OC spam, but 200/200 Marine/Hellion ain't all that good.
The main problem is gas, you cant get any more than 2 base unless you expand further. Having mass minerals doesn't really help all that much if you don't have the gas for the tech.
Also, so many MULEs are going to deplete your main and natural incredibly fast. You don't get 270 free minerals, you just get them faster from your mineral patches.
Since this build generally tends to go mid or lategame where mineral units become less effective, there isn't really all that much reason to go mass OC over depots.
And as mentioned, it's rather easy to scout, leaves you vulnerable early game and OCs take ages to build.
Still, OCs do make a nice mineral dump that can help lategame to sature an expansion faster (and build more SCVs faster), get more scans or upgrade your depots should some of them get shot up.
Why not do this late game when you're maxed? Build a bunch of orbitals, engage their army with yours + all your scvs, when the scvs die replace the lost supply with units & continue mining with mules. Next time your army engages you'll be up like 60 supply (I don't play terran, is 60 scvs an overestimation for late game T?) Not to mention pretty much infinite scans.
I'm nothing amazing but I am a nearly 2100 rated zerg player and this strat seems to show a lot of promise. Due to zergs nature of early aggression generally being an all in style attack I tend to focus on a very macro heavy build which this seems to take advantage of. I knew something odd was happening in the game but I didn't spot the cc being built with my overlord. I think by the time I got to lair tech the game was actually going to be lost because while I could crush his armies early on I couldn't really attack.
I think its partially luck based on the zergs part early on if they will beat it (via baneling bust) or another all in. I don't see a macro zerg player anywhere near the skill of the terran being able to beat this in the mid/late game. It just seems silly how strong it is against a macro style player. The next time I see this happening though i'll try being extremely aggressive with flooding in zerglings and banelings as soon as I get speed but I don't see it working out well.
I've seen this before, if it goes into late game terran can easily mass marine. It's sooo annoying to have the game won and an orbital lands at a random base (especially gold) and lands 15 mules so the terran can now support his 15 raxes immediately. Problem with marines is they are good vs everything so they complement OC farming quite well.
The games I'm thinking of the person wasn't OC farming per se, but all you need is three with high energy and you're in good shape. But if you have, say, 8 orbatals? You are in unstoppable shape!
I honestly don't know why this wasn't mainstream strategy 2 months ago. It's so obvious how overpowered mules are, you'd think someone would have come up with something sooner.
On December 02 2010 17:12 30to1 wrote: So this thread has sort of exploded and it seems that it only took two days for this to (some degree according to the replies) enter the meta. The Artosis/TeamLiquid tweets really pushed it over the edge. Over the next few weeks people will use it, test it, and the community will evaluate its overall worth by ... trying it in games and either winning or losing. So good luck, I hope this was worth while, and here is the information that I can help give you guys while trying it out.
NOTE - Based on most of the responses I don't think people got many of the reasons this is so good. So I've simplified the shit out of it and focused on what I think the long term less gimmicky use of this is. For those curious about the original numbers that lead me to this post - see spoiler at end.
Why is the OC special?
In the past, there were only three ways to generate income.
SC2 has given us a fourth income generating unit. It is the only one of its kind.
The MULE itself might be the little thingie that carries minerals around, but the thing thats actually special is not the MULE, its the OC itself. The reason? Oversaturation and the fact that the MULEs themselves are renewable for no mineral cost after your initial 550 investment (in other words, the MULEs themselves are disposable).
Every Orbital Command you build should provide you will a income of ~180/m per minute every minute. It does not matter how many workers are harvesting and it does not matter where you build or position that OC. It can still generate this income as long as you have a base, any base, anywhere, within walking distance of a mineral patch. It does not matter if a hellion fried a mule 5 minutes ago, it does not matter if you have 0 minerals and have nothing but a single OC. Every 90s an OC will bank 50 energy you can use to place a mule anywhere on the map. It doesn't even matter if you forgot to get your minerals for a few minutes - the OC will bank 4 income boosts if you forgot about it for a while, or if you just want to give yourself a sudden burst of 540/m per minute over the next 90 seconds.
Do not think of an OC as you would anything else in SC, it is fundimentally different. The OC is itself an income generating structure. Every 90 seconds an OC will generate you a little mechanical income boost (regardless of where it is or how many workers you have). Note: because OCs generate 50 energy at ~85 seconds there is a period of overlap between two mules, although I constantly cite OC income at ~180/min its closer to ~200 - OC income is higher than MULE income.
OCs are really good.
Can 4 OCs alone be better than a saturated expansion?
Yes. 4OCs will generate an income equal to a saturated expansion but there is more to it. Let's compare the options for generating 800/m/minute (worker costs are food adjusted @12.5 - no adjustment was applied for supply value of base).
~800/m/minute
This costs 1900 minerals / 24 supply
~800/m/minute
This costs 1800 minerals / 24 supply
~800/m/minute
This costs 550 minerals / 0 supply
Admittedly, this is a favorable oversimplification depending on your perspective, to get those 4 mules working constantly you need 4 OCs. With a bit of a discount considering you start with one CC, getting 3 addl OCs will cost you 1390 (food adjusted cost @12.5 per food not including first CC in food discount or build cost). That doesn't seem that great, sure you save a 400-500 minerals - but not game breaking.
The difference is in exposure and vulnerability. Look at those three bases and the costs under them. Thats how many minerals you're risking on your expansion. The real cost of an expansion is not the 3-400 minerals to build the base, the real cost is in the 1500 minerals to build the workers and the eight minutes it takes to replace them if they die.
Because an OC/MULE only expansion is nearly risk free compared to other bases and they fly you can take risks with them that you never would have dreamed of with a real expansion. The reality is, if a big threat drops and stims on your door and kills all your mules, it sucks, it hurts, and yeah, it might lose you a game. But often, you can just lift the thing, stick it somewhere else, call more mules and be just fine.
OC Farming is superior to a normal expansion since it carries less Risk. That means you can be more aggressive about 'expanding' to vulnerable areas - including gold expos or corner locations.
How does this fit into Supply Depots?
Every time you build a supply depot, you spend 100 minerals. Once built, those minerals are lost forever. They're just a burden and they die easy. A OC provides you with 137 minerals worth of supply, has a ton of hitpoints and unlike a supply depot will pay for itself in 3:20.
In an ideal world, you should absolutely never build a supply depot.
The reality is that you will have to build at least a couple supply depots in order to live long enough for an OC to pay for itself (I got a little over excited with my first post ;D). That said, every time you build a depot, you should be aware of the fact that those minerals could have been better spent on more OCs. That in the long run those OCs will catapult you ahead of your opponent.
Keep that in mind with every supply depot you make. Each one is a delay in OC Farming, the long term benefit in opting for OCs over Depots (where feasible) is very real.
How effective can OC Farming be?
Because your OC Farm can be very defensively positioned (you can actually use the OCs to wall off), OC Farming allows you the additional income of an expansion without the additional vulnerability. Because OCs can fly - they also give you tremendous flexibility in repositioning your current MULE fest.
There's a tremendous amount of flexibility in how this can be used. I think that it should be strong incentive to take a natural early and I predict terran FE may become really popular. With it, you should be able to produce the income of three or four bases much faster and much safer than any other race. Your MULE income off of the main and FE alone will be half of a third, and that should be a big appeal.
Some people may try to use a 4-8 OC mega push and play mass macro style. Frankly, I think this could be viable mid or late game. Sure you will lose at cost, but you can realistically double your opponents income so just throw 60 marines at him every minute, most will die, but your income will replace losses faster, and because you can reposition your expos at will with low risk you can mine shit out with less concern.
Or you could just play fairly standard and is drop a couple extra OCs if it looks like the game will go past 10 minutes. You should start to dramatically pull ahead in income compared to any other race with considerably less supply used in workers and with dramatically risk.
As this develops, I'll add more edits with notes, builds, replays, etc.
Some Replays and comments about games posted around page 18...
1v1 TvZ a better replay, the zerg(me) could have gotten better tech units rather tahn mutas. probably infestors. shows how fast a terran can produce and waves of waves of attacks. I could've micro'd better as well. http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/112219-1v1-terran-zerg-metalopolis
Please note that we knew what the terran was doing, and try'd things to stop it. We did not have any rules just the Z or P trying to stop it.
On December 04 2010 10:50 Bixs wrote: Here are some replays:
On December 04 2010 20:17 Dsn4001 wrote: Played against someone going mass orbital commands. You'd notice that even though I was always ahead in workers by at least 8. His income is always higher than mine except at the end game.
Problem was the map really, jungle basin is not best map for this since expansion besides the natural are limited.
If you have replays - feel free to PM me and I will include them, win or lose, top diamond or low bronze.
gongryong has put together a little FAQ - his comments mostly revolve around helping to clarify the first version of this post - which was much more extreme and focused on a more committed early OC all in - but I thought his points were still good. If he (or anyone else) wants to update or contribute to this, please feel free to PM.
FAQ
1. Please summarize what is this strategy/build all about? + Show Spoiler +
(Over the duration of this thread, this strategy has evolve a bit thanks to those willing to spend time and energy to try it out and prove/disprove it.) At this point, this build is about going standard early game as you see fit, and after that switching to mass OC for supply and mules and inevst in a mule heavy economy to support your army. With mass mules, you can sacrifice some of your scvs in order to get to an army heavy max 200/200 (some say 180/20) scenario
2. Do you mean i DO NOT have to build depots AT ALL? + Show Spoiler +
The idea of this strategy is to reduce dependence on depots as food supply and instead get it from OCs, especially mid-late game.
3. So you just build the initial depot and spam OC all the way? + Show Spoiler +
That was one of the initial ideas. But early tests indicate that you need standard depot build early game for the following reasons: - at 400m and longer build time, OCs are not optimal early game - you need early game depots to support first batch of scvs and early army
By midgame, or once you have a stable economy and decent army, you can SWITCH to this "build" by forgetting about depots and spamming OCs for mules (see details above for the figures on mule-heavy economy).
You will still need scvs particularly early game (per standard) until it is safe to switch to mule-based economy. At this point, you will need less scvs, mainly for gas harvest, repair, and building. Reducing scvs is an essential part of this strategy since it will give you a bigger percentage of army in a 200/200 max out scenario vs others.
If you proceed with your game rushing to this strategy, you will clearly have to skimp on early army. An opponent who scouts this might react to this aggressively with early pressure or might all-in against you. this could be a major problem. Or, you could simply go standard early to mid game, 2 basing preferably, and switch to this strategy, then you could see the potential of this strategy. Moreover, some point that mules only address the mineral aspect of your economy, what about the gas? I see this a general economy issue and not particular to this strategy - meaning mule or not, terran or any other race, one has to always mind gas harvesting. you will have to save some scvs for gas mining.
At this point, this strategy belongs to everyone, including you. If you think this is impossible, you are welcome ignore this. But IF you argue against it, please be kind enough to post a rational argument and not just a blanket denial. Otherwise, try it out yourself, experiment with it, mix it up, do anything to prove by your account if this build is viable or not. By then, you can post any argument you want with the benefit of personal experience.
Original post for those curious as to how this got started...
The goal of this thread is honestly, to come up with a game breaking technique for terran by maxing out abuse of mules. How does this end supply depots? We'll get to this soon.
I'll be stating a lot of stuff, backed up by with rough math. But I admit this is all theory craft at this point. I'll be refining this as we go - but I wanted to share my conclusions. If anyone is interested in helping me figure out how to absolutely abuse the ideas that follow - please contribute.
I came away pretty shocked at how incredibly broken mules are. I broke out excel and ran some calculations. The key point is I came away with is that once built, it takes around 3:20 for terran to pay for an orbital command plus 10 scvs (if people are curious I can share the xls).
The other key number is 4 orbital commands. That's the number of orbital commands required to call down enough mules to mine ~800 minerals per minute (the same as a fully saturated base).
Mules
Mules are incredible. So incredible that I think they may legitimately break the game if used to their fullest potential. An orbital command can put down a mule every ~85 seconds. A mule lasts 90 seconds and mines 180 minerals per minute. For comparison, 3 scvs mining a mineral patch will produce ~100 minerals per minute (about 40/35/25 if mining the same patch according to my tests). So in one sense a mule comes pretty close to being worth 5-6 scvs. A great ability that you can constantly use.
But the part where mules become broken is their ability to oversaturate a mineral patch. Every base in SC2 has 8 patches. In order to get 6 SCVs to mine 200 minerals a second, it takes up 2 mineral patches. A fully saturated base will mine 800 minerals per minute and require 24 scvs.
Mules on the other hand can mine 180 minerals a second regardless of how many other workers are there. With 24 scvs and 4 mules mining at a single base you should be able to mine roughly 1520 minerals a second. That's the same as two fully saturated expansions.
So 4 mules is roughly equal to a fully saturated base...so what?
4 Mules are much better than a fully saturated expansion.
In order to put together a fully saturated base, it costs money. You need to build the command center, and you need to build 24 workers, those 24 workers need to eat - so you also gotta build supply depots.
The true cost of an SCV is 50 minerals plus 1 supply (using a supply depot, a supply is worth 12.5 minerals) - so an SCV is costs 62.5 minerals. 24 of these will cost you 1500 minerals + 400 for the command center.
So it costs 1900 minerals to build and fully saturate an expansion - the CC itself is only ~25% of the total cost - the vast majority is in the workers and supply.
Why does this matter? 1900 minerals is a lot. It costs you that much to take a natural and fully saturate - this is why FE is pretty risky. Taking a quick third and fully saturating both bases will cost you 3800 minerals. Thats a metric shit ton. In this game, its generally not economically feasible to saturate a third base before your main is nearly mined out because of the cost in workers. Additionally, because workers take up supply, building 90 workers to fully saturate 3 bases will leave you with a paper army compared to someone 2 basing. Chances are pretty good, you won't hold that third (we see this happen time and again with zergs who take a third as a response to a FE - they simply do not have enough money to saturate and build any remote defense).
So most of the time, we all have to be content with a max income of around 1500 minerals per minute (2 fully saturated bases). It's almost impossible to exceed this (aside from golds, which we'll ignore for a bit).
Mules break all those rules
So here is where we finally get to the interesting shit. Mules are the only unit in SC that can completely break the above. A terran player capable of rolling out 4 mules on 2 fully saturated bases will mine ~2200 minerals per minute. This is realistically more than any other race can do. If you get really ambitious, a terran player capable of rolling out 8 mules on two bases will mine ~3000 minerals per minute. Thats equal to 4 fully saturated bases. With an income that high, you should be able to produce a marine every second.
But it's not possible to get a steady stream of 8 mules!
Well. Not if you play conventionally but I think that in order to play terran to its maximum potential, you should not play remotely like any other race, nor should you play as the designers intended, because AS TERRAN YOU SHOULD WORK HARD TO NEVER BUILD A SUPPLY DEPOT.
Well. Ok. You need that first one to get a barraks. But lets ignore that first depot. Let me say it again...
AS TERRAN YOU WORK HARD TO NEVER BUILD A SUPPLY DEPOT.
Command centers are always economically better for supply. Why? Because supply depots suck. They're just lost minerals AND they get killed easy leaving you supply blocked. If you can possibly arrange a way to afford it, you should ALWAYS BUILD COMMAND CENTERS FOR FOOD. Why? Because in ADDITION TO BUILDING WORKERS FASTER, THEY GIVE YOU MULES AND ALLOW YOU TO OVERSATURATE.
A command center gives you 11 food, this is worth 137 minerals in supply (depot gives 8 @ 100 minerals). The actual cost of a command center is really 263 minerals, the orbital is another 150. Using ONLY MULES the orbital command will pay for itself in about 3:20 (550 minerals) - a single mule will pay for the command center using its food adjusted cost in 90 seconds. After this, unlike a supply depot the orbital command will begin to improve your income. Dramatically. If you can get 2 orbital commands, the mules alone will entirely pay for a constant stream of additional orbital commands. What does this mean? Well. It means that you could have 8 orbital commands in around 9 minutes, and an income of 3,000 minerals per minute (equivilant to 4 fully saturated bases). Obviously, it won't always be possible to avoid building depots.But the point is that this is something you should try very hard to avoid. A supply depot does not improve your income. Orbital commands do. Two will completely pay for a third in mule income alone, 3 will give you 540 minerals / minute, allowing you to continue pumping out additional CCs in mass (paid for by mules alone).
So let me just review. Using your main, and your natural, you can have an income equvalent to 4 fully saturated bases. This mechanic is absolutely unparalleled by anything the other two races have -- and we haven't even started looking into planetary fortresses as incredibly cost effective defense yet.
Theorycraft I admit completely that this thread is theorycrafting at its best. But I wanted to put this post up so that I could eventually take credit for the inevitable nerf on Mules . I'll be adding builds, replays as I have time.
In the mean time, please feel free to add suggestions, think it out, try builds. The best I did was a 14 CC 15 rax with my 4th orbital at ~ 6 minutes. I walled off the natural with CCs and 2 bunkers. I had an income of 2200-2400 at 9 minutes. I'm sure this is viable.
EDIT:
Griffith has posted a build with high diamond replays showing that this is viable.
EDIT 2: 12/2/10 - I want to claim the phrase "Farming OCs" as this is essentially what this is all about.
Please... please please! there have been numerous posts about "omg mass OC build can rape"... Honestly people are tired of this terran qq fest... all TL forums are now is "marines are OP" "Mass OC's are OP" "Mule's are OP" Let's stopd these qq fests and become constructive and talk about balance.
1) Mass building CC's is never going to win you high competition games.... good opponents scout and respond
2) Command Centers take a long time to produce - compound with the OC tech time - thats a lot of time for opponents to counter you
3) SCVs have to be sacrificed for a period to build army production buildings - the balance is toss can drop down their warp in building and reuse that probe - zerg have to build one tech building and then they can pump ALL their units from one building instead of 3 different ones
4) If you have ever played terran - mineral overproduction is so common that mass OC's to a point become absolutely pointless
Basically is anyone else sick of Terran QQ - terran is NOT easy mode... its heavy micro intensive from base building to army movement, in all honesty the mule is a really good solution to a difficult micro intensive race - if you've ever played terran (not laddered up on gimmicks) it has a very high learning curve
wtf are you saying, so extra minerals are pointless? so if you have excess minerals you just stop making SCVs or expand? and your other arguments are so flawed im not even gonna waste my time. have fun in bronze bro
Boxer used this strategy vs hyperdub in the GSL! (group C match 2). His mineral gain was insane, and he was able to mass up bases on shakuras. Boxer has just proved that this strategy will work at the highest level of play.
On January 05 2011 07:56 yoplate wrote: GSL season 4 spoiler! + Show Spoiler +
Boxer used this strategy vs hyperdub in the GSL! (group C match 2). His mineral gain was insane, and he was able to mass up bases on shakuras. Boxer has just proved that this strategy will work at the highest level of play.
He proved that if you are in the lead, you can do funny stuff like this and get even more ahead. Or you can build 2 fusion cores.
On January 05 2011 07:56 yoplate wrote: GSL season 4 spoiler! + Show Spoiler +
Boxer used this strategy vs hyperdub in the GSL! (group C match 2). His mineral gain was insane, and he was able to mass up bases on shakuras. Boxer has just proved that this strategy will work at the highest level of play.
Not really. This is about using them for supply, he used them for minerals.
On January 05 2011 07:56 yoplate wrote: GSL season 4 spoiler! + Show Spoiler +
Boxer used this strategy vs hyperdub in the GSL! (group C match 2). His mineral gain was insane, and he was able to mass up bases on shakuras. Boxer has just proved that this strategy will work at the highest level of play.
It was such an epic game, but I dont think one isolated game where his opponent has never encountered the build before does not make it viable. I how ever believe mass orbitals have a lot of potential especially in the late game.
On January 05 2011 07:56 yoplate wrote: GSL season 4 spoiler! + Show Spoiler +
Boxer used this strategy vs hyperdub in the GSL! (group C match 2). His mineral gain was insane, and he was able to mass up bases on shakuras. Boxer has just proved that this strategy will work at the highest level of play.
To be honest, when he built the extra command centers he was already way ahead. He already had a siege tank line in his opponents base, I think he just built them because he was floating ridiculous amounts of minerals and he thought he'd already won.
Also I think every moron who responds to a post with "because of mules" or "finally people realize mules are OP" should be banned.
if your having issues with the korean terran scv and marine allin's with 2 oc's muleing paying for 3rd, with 7 rax constnatley making marines to reinforce, the 16 scv's at the start are just to build,gather untill 2 oc's and 7x rax are done.
as p, you're going to have to respond with constant ff of ramp to beat this , as zerg, a baneling bust can offer some help, depending on the skill of the sim city of the terran as t, ti's easy make like 2 bunkers and gogo repair
the main reason i sugguest cloak is because it's an allin tactic and once delayed after awhile it's extreamley hard to tranistion out of, marines and versicitle but not that much :D
it's a good tactic but it's a very agressive style mid game strat, playing it myself it just burns your base minerals up so fast it's crazy
the only minerl only units you can make as terran are
scv's (light) marines (light) hellions (light)
they all have a crital mass the size of there range (6) - this is generally approaching 20+ level, where the ammount of damage possible in a push is at it's max.
i be honest with u' i got a 100% loss vs this myself but it's not seen by professional players for a reason, i'm not sure why but there a reason u don't see if offen.
On January 05 2011 08:33 TibblesEvilCat wrote: if your having issues with the korean terran scv and marine allin's with 2 oc's muleing paying for 3rd, with 7 rax constnatley making marines to reinforce, the 16 scv's at the start are just to build,gather untill 2 oc's and 7x rax are done.
as p, you're going to have to respond with constant ff of ramp to beat this , as zerg, a baneling bust can offer some help, depending on the skill of the sim city of the terran as t, ti's easy make like 2 bunkers and gogo repair
the main reason i sugguest cloak is because it's an allin tactic and once delayed after awhile it's extreamley hard to tranistion out of, marines and versicitle but not that much :D
it's a good tactic but it's a very agressive style mid game strat, playing it myself it just burns your base minerals up so fast it's crazy
the only minerl only units you can make as terran are
scv's (light) marines (light) hellions (light)
they all have a crital mass the size of there range (6) - this is generally approaching 20+ level, where the ammount of damage possible in a push is at it's max.
i be honest with u' i got a 100% loss vs this myself but it's not seen by professional players for a reason, i'm not sure why but there a reason u don't see if offen.
Sorry can you rephrase this, I only understand, that you got something like a strategie thats unbeatable and its 7x rax + 2 OCs? and if zerg banelingbust you just build some banshees?
It probably has been said before, but the supplies freed by this strat (you can replace all your SCVs except those who mine gas) may become a huge advantage in late game (maxed) battles, as you can free about 30 or 40 supplies I would say...but mass OCs seems fragile against an aggressive opponent until late game.
I predicted this build early in beta and no one listened to me. Someone at blizzard is guilty of ignoring exponential growth.
I can't wait for the inevitable nerf. Terran (and really the entire game) deserves better than mules which are basically an income generating structure, the antithesis of what this game should be.
Anyways some terran tried this against me last week (at least I think that was what he was doing), and I beat him with mass ling/bling. If you are going this build, you will not have much in the way of tech units for a long time, and that makes it a bit easier to deal with. All you gotta do is prevent him from expanding and it is curtains.
The reason he did this is to reinforce his lead. I don't think you could pull this off with a disadvantage, but this can cement your lead while your ahead. In TvT, one person's supply might massively exceed the other. However, it is very difficult for the winner to finish his opponent due to the defensive power of siege tanks. I have won (and lost) many TvT's after losing the advantage, but catching his tanks out of position and managing to claw my way back in with drops. The OC strategy ensures that you have a massive supply of income. In addition, the mule income allows you to make larger armies, giving you the greater advantage when it comes down to a maxed battle.
I do not think this build should be used early on, in smaller maps, or when you are behind. Instead, OC farming should be used on larger maps (shakuras being the best map) in order to cement your lead.
On January 05 2011 07:56 yoplate wrote: GSL season 4 spoiler! + Show Spoiler +
Boxer used this strategy vs hyperdub in the GSL! (group C match 2). His mineral gain was insane, and he was able to mass up bases on shakuras. Boxer has just proved that this strategy will work at the highest level of play.
I love how Boxer is always at the forefront of the meta game development.
The main advantage of OC/mule based mining in late game is to free up supply once you reached 200/200. You only need SCV:s for mining gas, building structures and repairing. The majority of the SCVs can be suicided into the opponent.
Other uses for OC is to call down mules on opponent tanks to induce friendly fire, for instant field repairs or use scans instead of vikings for spotting.