TL:DR since its a bit ranty: How do I convert a macro advantage into a win when the game seems stalemated.
I am trying to get back into the game and am Platinum WoL. My Macro is NOT GOOD-its just better than my opponents often. I can upload a recent replay if you like but it's a similar problem.
Everyone from Day9 to WinterSC tells you to "focus on your macro" and not even think of much else till you hit Diamond+ (and I haven't bought LotV yet so its not even the best players). I believe that, and I'm trying to work on it which makes these situations even more frustrating.
I get the macro advantage by doing a gasless FE and often hold off early pressure without letting my macro slip too much. The I build up my 3Rax 1 Factory 1 Starport bio army (which is the beginner build I'm trying to perfect before branching). I march my army across the map where things start going wrong.
In this particular game, he has his tanks sieged, bunkers, planetary fortresses. From horrible experience, I know throwing my units into that grinder is a poor move. So I just expand over the map, while my army sits outside his base(s).
He just kept sending large packs of reapers back home to split my army and kill my workers/supply depots.
He then transitioned into Battlecruisers and Vikings which I was easily able to kill with my superior Bio force except he kept dancing them in between bases and off the edge, abusing their mobility to slowly kill off all my depots and workers.
Guys, over 10 agonizing minutes he whittled down my worker/supply/CC count to near nothing. I lost a game where I had a SEVENTY supply advantage by minute 20. All the while I was afraid to just commit to a base trade because Terran defense is crazy strong.
Good on him, and all that, he used a tactic that worked. What I'm upset about is that it feels I don't know what to do in that situation. I've often been in this situation where it feels like my choices are:
a) Run my army into Terran defense and lose my supply lead b) Lose to something strange despite a supply/base lead
Transition to ravens/vikings/maybe a few banshees to force out thors. I guess battle cruisers as your opponent made wouldn't be a bad choice because yamato has a cooldown now. This is the ultimate late game composition. It doesn't matter if you went bio or mech, the air composition can be made either way. At some point the ground army becomes really poor so you just want to mass out starports, like 3 or 4 for a start, maybe trickle them in slowly. There are like a ton of games I've seen where bio terrans can't beat avilo cuz they never transition out of pure marine, marauder, medivac, when they really need ravens and vikings.
Thank you! That's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.
So I'm not crazy, and the beginner bio build can't win TvT on Macro alone? I had heard about "sky terran" being the "correct" choice late game but had no idea what it was.
When I get into a stalemate where I'm ahead, should i just play defensive (keep my army close to home), take bases and start building 2 tech lab Starports, to go along with my reactored starports? I can then "waste" my bio army in drops and stuff while I remax?
From what I see usually, bio wins versus mech most games before they can get to that stalemate stage you speak of. I think during those stalemates taking more bases and getting a lot of tech reactored starports as much as you can support would be a good idea. Don't hesitate just putting them down a lot. I'd be reluctant to waste too many at once since he could probably move out and beat you before you get a good amount of ravens w/ energy. I think siege tanks would be a good idea as well, but I'm not entirely sure. When you do have ravens just use seeker missiles to shave off their defenses. Things like siege tanks outside of turret protection getting seekered and then the opponent not paying attention soon enough is good. PDD's and then seekers to force him to unsiege and then running in your bio force or line of siege tanks could be cool too.
Part of my experience with tvt has always been that macro is less important than position on the map. Countless times I've been down in supply upgrades or econ but have claimed important territory with my tanks that allows me to trade effecently. Or I get a clutch drop that lets me trade 8 marines for twice there cost in worker and buildings. TvT is chess the goal of the game is not to have more pieces it's to have the winning position to checkmate your opponent. That's the beauty of the matchup once you get past the early game, it's all about positioning, map control, and vision, supply matters but it usually won't outright decide games.
Unless you're planning on practicing stalemate positions a lot I wouldn't recommend focusing on winning after the game has gone stale, but if that is the case your goal should be to either get enough vikings/bcs to beat meching opponents antiair asap while preparing to counterattack with marines, or getting ravens first which is part of the ultimate army and takes a long time to get good, and then slowly adding a few bcs while always maintaining a few tanks. You do need to find some sort of timing or safe base-denial with this though since otherwise your opponent can do the exact same thing and you could lose out to superior micro in the endgame if you let that happen, despite having a big macro lead.
The reason I don't recommend this type of play-style in TvT is that if you just sit back and defend you're giving your opponent too many options to deal damage, especially through tank doom-drops which are effective even if you have a larger defending army. It would probably be more effective to watch replays and try to find openings in your opponents defense when your army is much bigger, either by posturing outside of your opponent denying them space and expansions and defending at the same time with good scouting, or actually straight up attacking.
If you are very ahead in macro a viking + liberator + tank +marine army will beat any defensive position through a few simple steps. 1. siege up tanks just outside of opponents tanks 2. keep marines near tanks 3. put vikings very close to liberators 4. siege up liberators just in range of opponents tanks (only works if your tanks are close so opponents marines can't touch the liberators, and you have more vikings than opponent) (if your opponent has thors you might need liberator range here) 5. kill tanks/force opponent back and repeat from step 1 until your tanks are in range of their eco/production. And be careful of counterattacks while doing this.
I think the obvious problem is that you focus on your macro too much. Yes, you can always macro better, but that doesn't mean that the best way to play is to focus on macro to the exclusion of all else, nor is it the best way to improve yourself. The whole "focus on your macro" thing is totally overblown. It's a nice mantra propugated by streamers, but the main effect appears to be new or struggling players end up not enjoying the game as much and end up fustrated as to why their macro doesn't win them games, or appear to be improving slowly. It's fun to beat up on weaker players with macro 2 leagues ahead of them, but in the end it is just that, beating up on weaker players. Learning a little game knowledge is a powerful thing as you have just discovered. A little micro will be more effective than 1A. Adapting to game circumstances, as your opponent did, by reacting to a greater macro by bypassing your contain with harrass is a useful abilty toi have.
You can win games on macro alone, but you will learn slower since it is harder to improve a skill that has already have a lot of time invested in it. You'll enjoy and learn faster if you focus a little on the aspects you have been lacking. You got harrassed to death, which meant that your entire army was in a big ball infront of his base, and you never had any units around the map to spot for units, or you simply haven't acquired the skill to watch the minimap.
In WoL, there are ways to break a defensive tankline, but you need some micro ability. You cannot simply throw "units into that grinder" as you already know. Seige tanks have 2 more range than their sight range.
This means that if you can deny sight and extend yours, you will destroy your opponents tanks with impunity. The fact that you had a bigger army and better macro just helps to replenish losses. The main ways of doing this are scans and vikings. Medivacs and floating buildings can also be used. You will need to edge your tanks forward within range to shoot your opponents tanks while denying their ability to extend their sight range. Since you have superior macro, you should have more vikings. In TvT with both of you going tanks, you should always aim to have air control. With more vikings you can destroy their vikings/medivacs/floating buildings. Once all those are gone, your opponent will be reliant on scans. You can trade evenly with scans and after that, their tanks will be easy pickings to your tanks. It helps that in your case, it sounds like he has no OC and you have loads. So abuse the fact that you have more scans and army and just go kill him. Basically, the same thing FightingFrog said but without the liberators. A little micro goes a long way to using macro.
at your level, abuse their shitty map positioning and go for doom drops. it's rare youll meet a terran who will be able to deal with doom drops cost effectively at gold/low plat level. Tvt is an awful matchup in lotv for many reasons, one of them being it's extremely hard to actually win a game. if they're turtling too hard, try to contain them with your army and expand and tech into bc's off like 4 bases.
Do you happen to have any replays that we might be able to take a look at that describes the situation above?
A few replays (especially ones where you lose) - might be helpful in making sure we're all talking about the correct thing. It's easy for the person playing the game to say, "Well I lost because of 'X'", when X wasn't all that important and just carried things away right at the end.
If the game is in a stalemate and you have a stronger economy, you should be able to transition faster to Battlecruisers and get better upgrades than your opponent.
SLOWLY reduce your supply while holding key locations, add more Orbitals to eliminate need for SCVs and boost your supply count.