[H] What to do in TvT

Hi, I'm Targe, a low league player on EU.

With TvT I understand what composition to generally get, I understand to drop, hold areas with tanks and all that, however I'm struggling with the late game where you end up with siege tanks versus siege tanks and you cant really break the front.

First of all, here is a replay of a game I just played:
+ Show Spoiler +

Things I noticed when rewatching:
My upgrades were absolutely terrible, I'm not sure what happened there, I guess I was focusing on defending versus my opponent too much.
My macro slipped badly; I didn't add 6,7,8 rax till too late and was slow to build tanks.

But I don't think I lost for these reasons, I feel it was more to do with me being unable to move out comfortably and also was unable to take a fourth.
AND
I wasn't really able to damage his expansions enough to hurt his economy.

Question
How should you break out of this sort of situation where you are pinned like this?
In the end I got frustrated and just sent my army out straight, accidently sent tanks first and the army got decimated.

Thanks in advance to anyone that can help.

~Targe

Zelniq - you can avoid this DDoS problem if you increase your RAM. there is website to download more rams search TL to find it | Wax: fuck i forgot people can't read | Coach Park: We need miracle. We will make the miracle. Expect us and love us.

WarBobz June 30 2012 04:00. Posts 68

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Did you try Nukes to break siege lines? Or BC. As far as I know from TvT , it comes down to huge viking bc raven vs viking bc raven. Maybe thors. But nukes are the best way to break a siege line. They guarantee you that you push forward, because it's one of these two situations:

-You unsiege, but you let me cancel the nuke and I move forward
-You don't unsiege, I use my nuke but you lose your tanks.

Ahem. My time to shine. I haz 4k+ achi points and I'm zerg! =D

Emporium England. June 30 2012 04:29. Posts 133

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OK so i watched the game, im only a silver terran here, BUT, firstly you didn't macro well enough, you never had enough SCV's to keep up with the production that he had. You went to 3 base and moved way too many drones down to your 3rd, i would have moved less than that, and then just had all your OC's muleing at the 3rd and sending SCV's there, until you hit the required amount.

You should be doing this every game anyway, just by selecting all your SCV's at each mining base and seeing how many you have, 3 base SHOULD have 65plus, with Mules. The most you ever have is i think 54, this is way too low.

You are right that your upgrades are behind but i think the worse thing is that you dont move out and secure a fourth.

He traded with you really inefficiently for a long time, which is the reason that you stayed in the match for so long, it meant that even though he had 3 full bases,(and a fourth eventually) you weren't ever miles behind in supply.

But after every time you defended you didnt move out, instead you tried to do drops, you say in your post that you understand how to drop, and i think that is all well and good, but you also say that you're a lower league player, and i don't think you have the mechanics behind it to be able to drop well and also keep up with macro, as was shown in this match.

I would suggest that in this match you didnt lose because of bad siege engagements, (altho that was the final nail in the coffin) i think it was bad macro, that lead to you never feeling comfortable to taking a fourth or teching into raven/bc/banshee/thor, to try and win because you didnt have the economy behind it.

EDIT: So after he failed to attack you or you outright traded with him, i would have just made a 4th and then waypointed your units to it, the natural 4th seems like a fine spot to do it, and then just sieged up there, and then just have a couple of units at home to stop drops etc
I think this way, because he traded badly with you for such a period of the game you could have won this match, if you had managed to take the fourth or even fully support your 3rd.

Last edit: 2012-06-30 04:32:01

Remember your mortality.

Targe United Kingdom. June 30 2012 05:27. Posts 1686

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On June 30 2012 04:29 Emporium wrote:
OK so i watched the game, im only a silver terran here, BUT, firstly you didn't macro well enough, you never had enough ...........
I think this way, because he traded badly with you for such a period of the game you could have won this match, if you had managed to take the fourth or even fully support your 3rd.

Thanks for the reply, yes I know my macro isn't great but even so this was a poor performance on my part.
I do also realise that my macro needed to be a lot better in order to win this game (I actually knew I wouldn't win as my opponent is diamond).
What I'm really concerned about is what to do in this situation and not why I lost, Improving my mechanics and macro is easy, that just takes time and practice, but it is tactical decisions: positioning, when to move out, when to attack, what units to get etc. that I come to TL for.

As for the details on when to move out, thanks a bunch! So you're saying just after a trade, I'll try it out next time!

Sorry If I'm appearing rude, trust me that isn't my intention im incredibly grateful for any details!

Emporium England. June 30 2012 05:41. Posts 133

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No i understand, but yeah, you traded really well with him at the start, so that your supply wasn't that far behind even though he had a fully supported 3rd
i would have MOVED beyond your 3rd expo, so that you could get it saturated and keep it safe, and then would have tried to get the air advantage in terms of Vikings and just teched them up loads, and just tried to slowly push him back.

SIege tank lines are really double edged, i hate them when they are outside mine, but loving doing it to others!

Remember your mortality.

Targe United Kingdom. June 30 2012 05:47. Posts 1686

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Ahh Ok, So leap frog the tanks forwards a bit? should i have just chucked down a 4th after a trade then placed a couple siege tanks and marines along side?
Is the viking count there in order to prevent the medis coming forward with the marines?

Thanks again

vBr Sweden. June 30 2012 07:02. Posts 175

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vikings are chiefly to provide vision for siege tanks. Siege tanks have 13 range but they do not have long enough vision to fire at maxrange.

Captain Marksie June 30 2012 09:58. Posts 40

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You say you don't think you lost because of your macro slips but had you been up to par with your macro and had executed your opening better you would have ended the game with the first push. You still had almost double his army size but the first engagement goes heavily in his favour leaving you slightly behind in the end.

The second engagment went alot better for you and put the resources lost in your favour. However, his macro was much better than yours so even though you won the battle he is still way ahead in the war. His upgrades are especially far ahead at this point to. His bio gets 3-2 and mech gets 2-0 at the same time yours bio has 1-1 and mech 0-0 but just as importantly he has many more SCVs so his income is much higher than yours so he can get away with having bad engagements.

He attacks your third and you do a nice counter drop at his natural which does good damage and forces a retreat. THIS IS YOUR QUEUE TO MOVE OUT. You have 11 tanks to his 4 and a much larger army size overall. You did the right thing to throw down a 4th and i would agree with the position of it. If you had moved out when he retreated you could have set up around his 3rd base, probably forcing him to stop mining and allowing you to kill of his 4th and 5th expansion with a few units while focusing must of your effort at his 3rd. This would also make taking your 4th so much safer. But because you didn't move out you had to cancel the 4th.

He had much better macro than you and you gave him free reign to macro up so after each engagement, even though you traded favourably you allowed him to get back on even footing with you by letting him macro up unaffected.

You get a bad engagement in the middle of the map after having to cancel your fourth but do a good bit of damage with a drop at his third. At this point you have killed 42 of his workers, yet he still has more than you. He also has 5 orbitals to your 2. So once again his macro is better than yours. Eventually he just has more stuff with better upgrades and catches you moving out and crushes your army and you gg.

So you may think im being very harsh with my analysis but what i have found is I improve much quicker if i blame myself and take into account all my mistakes in the games i lose but i don't take it personally.

Anyways in summary:
1. Work on your opening until its water tight. You were under no pressure early game yet still the opening was sloppy.
2. Macro better. Yes it's been posted on the forums a million times but its been posted that many times for a reason, and if you go to http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=330787 you should be all good for macro tips.
3. Be more aggresive. The best way to learn when it's the right time to move out is to just move out as often as you can. You will learn pretty quick when it's safe or not by getting crushed from moving out to early where as if you do what you did and never really move out then you won't learn. "Keep throwing yourself into the fire and you'll learn pretty quick how not to get burnt"

It may also be worth changing up your style of play a bit. You get a lot of tanks but never really use them. So now you have to choices, learn how to use tanks or change to a style which doesnt involve tanks. You also seem to like doing drop so maybe you should try giving bio a try. It will also force you to be aggresive which should help with your fears of moving out.

You're question was "How should you break out of this sort of situation where you are pinned like this?" but in my eyes you were never really pinned in your base. He never set up shop around your base with siege tanks. You were free to leave your base almost the entire game. If you are unsure wether he is sieged up outside your base then just send out one marine to see the situation.

Targe United Kingdom. June 30 2012 18:00. Posts 1686

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On June 30 2012 09:58 Captain Marksie wrote:
You say you don't think you lost because of your macro slips but had you been up to par with your macro and had executed your opening better you would have ended the game with the first push. You still had almost double his army size but the first engagement goes heavily in his favour leaving you slightly behind in the end.

.....

You're question was "How should you break out of this sort of situation where you are pinned like this?" but in my eyes you were never really pinned in your base. He never set up shop around your base with siege tanks. You were free to leave your base almost the entire game. If you are unsure wether he is sieged up outside your base then just send out one marine to see the situation.

Thanks for the reply,
I guess I'll talk about macro again, I know my macro isn't great (In this game it was worse than usual by far; I totally forgot armoury and usually I won't make a mistake of any kind until I have at least medivacs out) however that isn't what I'm concerned about, I know with sheer practice I can improve my macro however with practice I can't work out what decisions to make etc.

What you said about aggression was exactly what I was looking for when I posted, in the game I felt that I was pinned to my base, I didn't realise I could move out comfortably however I now know I should.

My games on ladder don't tend to reach this stage of the game, about 19/20 of them will end with a failed all in by my opponent, or them not being able to prevent a regular timing.

<EDIT> Also from what I see from your post it seems like I should not give him a safe break to macro after winning an engagement?
I just tend to feel that I have too few units after an egagement, forgetting that my opponent is also low on units too.

Last edit: 2012-06-30 18:02:30

cythaze June 30 2012 19:31. Posts 251

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Im not going into macro on this one, as u clearly said u know u have to improve there.

so the 2 biggest mistakes i noticed in the replay were

1.) Your defensive siege position wasn´t that great, u had a good number of siege tanks all the time and he still could run up the ramp to your third twice and snipe it. So if you want to stay defensive at your third i think u have to get into better position with your tanks (remember: he even could have attacked you from the passage to the right, where u were undefended aswell.

2.) You had 0 mapcontrol all the time, which is a very important factor in marine/tank tvts. After u push him back try to gain better position on the map, maybe use scans to be sure that there isn´t a secondary siege line or something, or better: use a single stimed marine then move forward, take the watchtower on your side of the map (he had that all game long more or less), scout for expos (maybe u can put some pressure on his third in return?) and so on.

Maybe u could use 1 or 2 sensor towers if u aren´t that familiar yet with proper positioning, as the additinal vision of your opponents movements can prevent such things as losing your third without having a chance to react.

Targe United Kingdom. July 01 2012 04:34. Posts 1686

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On June 30 2012 19:31 cythaze wrote:
Im not going into macro on this one, as u clearly said u know u have to improve there.

so the 2 biggest mistakes i noticed in the replay were

1.) Your defensive siege position wasn´t that great, u had a good number of siege tanks all the time and he still could run up the ramp to your third twice and snipe it. So if you want to stay defensive at your third i think u have to get into better position with your tanks (remember: he even could have attacked you from the passage to the right, where u were undefended aswell.

2.) You had 0 mapcontrol all the time, which is a very important factor in marine/tank tvts. After u push him back try to gain better position on the map, maybe use scans to be sure that there isn´t a secondary siege line or something, or better: use a single stimed marine then move forward, take the watchtower on your side of the map (he had that all game long more or less), scout for expos (maybe u can put some pressure on his third in return?) and so on.

Maybe u could use 1 or 2 sensor towers if u aren´t that familiar yet with proper positioning, as the additinal vision of your opponents movements can prevent such things as losing your third without having a chance to react.

Thank you for understanding ^^

I totally forgot about that run in into the third along the right, so I guess I should move my tanks slightly further right then leave my marines between the second and third?

As for point two, I tend to like to send one stimmed marine, as for this game I just felt pinned to my base and forgot that both of us had lost units in the engagements so I could have actually moved out.

I'd rather not use sensor towers though, I'd like to learn to react to my opponent in an attempt to improve my game awareness and proper positioning; I was playing custom games so it doesn't matter whether I win or lose.

Goetzinho ftw Germany. July 01 2012 04:42. Posts 115

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TvT is just a horrible matchup. You have to play defensive and try to snipe CCs/Tech until you can roll over your opponent. With Marine/Tank its really easy to snipe CCs, especially in lower leagues were people have trouble with Multitasking/Defense.

Or you can just only play Cheese/1-Base like alot of Terrans do in TvT.

vBr Sweden. July 01 2012 05:04. Posts 175

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On July 01 2012 04:42 Goetzinho ftw wrote:
TvT is just a horrible matchup. You have to play defensive and try to snipe CCs/Tech until you can roll over your opponent. With Marine/Tank its really easy to snipe CCs, especially in lower leagues were people have trouble with Multitasking/Defense.

Or you can just only play Cheese/1-Base like alot of Terrans do in TvT.

It's a great matchup and very few all-in in highmasters, since its fairly easy to hold most all-ins once you get comfortable playing Terran. Not really sure what you base your claims on.

TvP is a horrible matchup because its the same every single game, MMMVG into MMMVG. In TvT you have to use your mind to play.

Last edit: 2012-07-01 05:05:25

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