So... Starcraft 2?

[Malacite]

Re: So... Starcraft 2?

Even with the Speed, as long as you're micro is very good and you can keep off the creep you can pick them off np. The only way you're going to bring them down with just lings is if you can surround them with enough units.

That was just one of many games where Lz abuses the Reapers. I'm not trying to make them out to be some super God unit because they're not, but they are easily one of the best games for early eco harassing. Their usefulness IMO depends greatly on the map you're on too; Metalopolis I think it's called, has a bunch of ledges for Reapers to hop up and down from which is just a total nightmare for melee units like lings and zealots.

[MrMageo]

Re: So... Starcraft 2?

Mal have you played the game yet? They reduced reaper costs, reduced reaper upgrade costs, to try and make the unit worth using. Still, it is rarely used outside of early cheese. Hell you could accomplish a similar feat using 3-4 marines. The reason reapers work is cause you jump the opponents units, once he has ranged (stalker,marine,queen) or an early upgradeable unit (zergling,zealot) or any for of static defense, (canon/spine crawler) it is a wasted unit. That is a terrans rush, on par with a ling or canon rush (also a lot rush).

Anyhow, i see many people play if you would like to practice ever so you dont butcher your ladder hit me up. Kurtmooreca@yahoo.ca.

[Solymir]

Re: So... Starcraft 2?

They are not three full games. In our opinion they are three packages containing 1/3 of a game.

Repeat of something I said before. If they had released 1 game with 3 campaigns, and then 2 follow up expansions with 3 more campaigns each it would be worth full price times three. As it is you pay full price for each individual campaigns.

Here's an example. The original SC had a campaign for each race. Brood War Expansion pack had a campaign for each race, and was cheaper than the original.

To take this one step further using a different game as a reference. Heroes of Might and Magic IV had a full game with a campaign for 6 individual races. They released two expansions that added 6 more individual campaigns each and were less expensive than the original HOMM IV.

These are the memories we have for doing games like this, and this is not the format they are following for SC2.

[Lmnop]

Re: So... Starcraft 2?

Put up, or shut up. I've seen Reapers in the hands of high/top level players do horrific damage. Yeah they're not invincible, but ONE Stalker? I don't think so.

Like I said, check out HD Starcraft's youtube channel. LzGamer & Painuser are crazy good @ Terran, and they love Reapers.

Starcraft 2 Forums

Post there and tell them how amazing Reapers are. Go ahead, I'll wait.

(Or I'll save you the time: Lzgamer's Reaper play is the only thing standing between reaper respect and everyone thinking they're a waste of space. I hope the metagame gets beyond that because they're one of my favorite units, but they're ridiculously limited in scope.)

---------- Post added at 06:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:40 PM ----------

Ok, I just skimmed through your link and my MASSIVE HYPERBOLE alarm started sounding.

MrMageo explicitly said you need zergling speed upgrade to fight off reapers. What did you do? Post a video where Z went Spawning pool > Hatchery w/out gas. You know what that means? HE HAS SLOW ZERGLINGS => Deadlings. You're only looking at the data that supports your argument.

I really shouldn't be bashing reapers this much. I keep thinking in my heart "once players get some time to experiment, people will realize they're a viable choice all through the game!" But right now, their only use is in catching your opponent with his pants down. For example, zerg going rather FE with no gas. That's suicide against Terran and he deserved to lose.

[DakAttack]

Re: So... Starcraft 2?

lmfao now I KNOW you people are full of shit. Your micro must be really bad.


YouTube- HD Starcraft 2 Machine v LzGaMeR p1/1

Don't go J9 on us. Watching videos of game isn't the same as playing it.

[Malacite]

Re: So... Starcraft 2?

Reapers are good against Zerg in a limited role, in the event a zerg player goes early pool to speedlings your reapers are next o useless

lmfao now I KNOW you people are full of shit. Your micro must be really bad.


[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV49FKutcf0&playnext=1&videos=tUjaHQWK920"]YouTube- HD Starcraft 2 Machine v LzGaMeR p1/1[/nomedia]

[MrMageo]

Re: So... Starcraft 2?

Put up, or shut up. I've seen Reapers in the hands of high/top level players do horrific damage. Yeah they're not invincible, but ONE Stalker? I don't think so.

Like I said, check out HD Starcraft's youtube channel. LzGamer & Painuser are crazy good @ Terran, and they love Reapers.

Reapers are good against Zerg in a limited role, in the event a zerg player goes early pool to speedlings your reapers are next o useless, in the event he fast expands pre pool than your reapers will have a field day. It is a heavy timing attack and is akin to an all in. You see a few videos that the event worked, how many other times has it not worked?

Against toss, it is a little different, yes a stalker sucks, it can mess with reapers, but you should be able to one shot probes with 4-5 of them, in which case a couple quick fly by's between main and expo;s can rake in some good kills. However, the real advantage is forcing a player to change his momentum. I have used reapers to delay Stargate tech by essentially requiring the toss player to build several stalkers. This allows me to dictate what units I want to see and when early on.

Not to mention reapers are only decent on certain maps. Long distance maps suck, they take to long to get there, maps with minimal routes in and out of the base using ledges suck, thebest map IMO is Metolopolis, simply do to the positioning of the natural mineral line and the main mineral line.

Ive watched every terran video on HD Starcrafts page, and reapers are always the least common unit, and HD himself is usually surprised when they get fielded on mass. They require very tedious micro and are akin to going all in. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't. Just like a Zergling rush, and a cannon rush.

[DakAttack]

Re: So... Starcraft 2?

Repears are definitely not that difficult to defend against, but they can shit all over you if you're not prepared. All it takes is a few marines at whatever cliff they'll most likely jump up. Or, better yet, a few marauders; they eat Repears for breakfast.

They're a hefty investment, though, and situational at best. You can pump marines out and still harass just as well.

I'm currently in the silver league, and I'm winning most of my games through harassing. People don't seem to recover too well from it, or they simply think they can't, and end up leaving. Terran have a few ways to harass, my favorite being Ravens, so far. All you need is one and you can throw a turret into their supply lines and cause a little havoc. Two Ravens and you can really mess somebody up. Banshees, under the right situation, work extremely well.

[Malacite]

Re: So... Starcraft 2?

Yes it does. Against a player of equal skill, if you play expecting your opponent to go reapers, you will shut it down with very minimal losses. And if Terran is devoting enough reapers to overwhelm said stalker then Protoss a) has more stuff he can feasibly reroute and b) can take advantage of the opportunity cost of reapers.

Put up, or shut up. I've seen Reapers in the hands of high/top level players do horrific damage. Yeah they're not invincible, but ONE Stalker? I don't think so.

Like I said, check out HD Starcraft's youtube channel. LzGamer & Painuser are crazy good @ Terran, and they love Reapers.

[Lmnop]

Re: So... Starcraft 2?

1 Stalker ain't gonna cut it.

Yes it does. Against a player of equal skill, if you play expecting your opponent to go reapers, you will shut it down with very minimal losses. And if Terran is devoting enough reapers to overwhelm said stalker then Protoss a) has more stuff he can feasibly reroute and b) can take advantage of the opportunity cost of reapers.

See, here's the problem: Vespene is way more precious than it was in BW. This makes the 50 gas investment hefty. But more importantly, build time. Marines take 25 seconds to train (at default game speed; adjust accordingly) and reapers take around 40. That doesn't seem significant, except in the early game, if you have 8 reapers, that means you tied up your barracks for the amount of time that you COULD HAVE made over 12 marines -- in addition to how much you've set back your tech tree progression due to high vespene cost. If and, remembering the "against player of equal skill" caveat, I do mean IF, your Reaper squad doesn't completely shut down the opponent, it's possible to outright lose the game when your opponent walks into your base despite a ruined economy. That's why, as of now, Reapers are right up there with Motherships for "units no one would mind seeing deleted" -- they are a risky play every time that have very little value outside the surprise of seeing the 1st attack with them.

That said, I'll admit to having taken severe damage from reaper rushes before. But that's because those players were just plain better than me and I wasn't smart enough to anticipate. Also: some maps favor reapers. Some completely shit on them.

[Ufgt]

Re: So... Starcraft 2?

Ugh, reapers. So annoying to defend against.

[Malacite]

Re: So... Starcraft 2?

Reapers have an exceedingly narrow range of usefulness. One Stalker in the mineral line can defend up to 4 reapers with little loss. If they attack with more reapers than that, you probably have a 2nd stalker by that time. A little scouting or simply seeing how big their standing army is can tell you when they've transitioned out of reapers, meaning you can recall the single Stalker over to the rest of your forces. In TvT, a single Marauder functions identically. Queens do somewhat decently at this for Zerg.

Check out HD Starcraft's channel for epic Reaper harassment. 1 Stalker ain't gonna cut it. It might kill the reapers, but the reapers will take out at least 3 workers.

[Lmnop]

Re: So... Starcraft 2?

Reapers have an exceedingly narrow range of usefulness. One Stalker in the mineral line can defend up to 4 reapers with little loss. If they attack with more reapers than that, you probably have a 2nd stalker by that time. A little scouting or simply seeing how big their standing army is can tell you when they've transitioned out of reapers, meaning you can recall the single Stalker over to the rest of your forces. In TvT, a single Marauder functions identically. Queens do somewhat decently at this for Zerg.

I did, however, recently see a player (lzgamer) using squads of them vs Zerg pretty effectively. But other than the early timing reaper rushes (not something you just decided to spit out every once in a while -- they rely on exploiting timings), I'd really encourage anyone to stay away from reapers until they know the game well enough to know when to diverge from the plan.

Tanks aren't much more expensive. I believe in Brood War, they were 150/100/2. Now they're 150/125/3. So 25 more vespene and an extra supply makes them harder to amass.

A lot of rushes can be foiled with early scouting if you know what you're looking for. If a Terran opponent is grabbing his gas before his barracks, he probably intends a reaper rush. But if a Zerg gets gas before spawning pool, he's probably just playing for an econ game. If your scouting worker can find a tech lab as soon as a barracks finishes, w/out any marines even, that's probably another sign of a reaper (not necessarily super reaper cheese, but 1 for early worker harass). Of course, the absolute biggest things to worry about are worker count and how much... stuff... is in his base. Just a pylon in his base when your barracks is just getting finished? PANIC. You're being cannon rushed or proxy gated. Start scouting and get ready to use your SCVs to help defend.

As a primarily protoss player (and therefore, owner of a ridiculously powerful tier 1 unit), I find cheese/rush strats aren't too imposing if you know they're coming.

[Malacite]

Re: So... Starcraft 2?

Tanks are much more expensive now aren't they?

As for early game units, I've been watching a lot of high level videos on youtube making very good use of early Reapers. They're nasty once they get that speed upgrade, wow.

[DakAttack]

Re: So... Starcraft 2?

Terran is my absolute worst race, first off (which is too bad, because I think they're the neatest).

I wouldn't wait 'til 11 to build a supply depot. I think 10 supply and then barracks as soon as you hit 150 minerals is better.

In my admittedly limited 2v2 (I tend towards 1v1) experience, I haven't experienced much in the way of very early cheese rushes, but I DO see a lot of timed all-ins. This is to say, both opponents build as big of an army as they can off of 1 base and run out together. If the attack fails, you can retaliate or (even better) expand w/out fear. With an expansion or 2 up and running and your opponents stuck 1-basing, you've already won (assuming you keep an eye on them and punish them if they try to expo). Trick is surviving their team all-in. Best of luck.

Some general tips:

-try not to queue up units to build. Some is OK, but never full. I try to limit myself to 2 units in a queue at a time (that's one actively building and one waiting). If you can have all your production structures with 3+ units queued up, you need to be building more production facilities!

-as a follow up to that, everyone in the starcraft community believes macro > micro and even macro > strategy. For the vast majority of the game, what you choose to build is secondary to having a strong economy and keeping your money low. As Day [9] says: when you try really hard to keep your money low, you tend to end up doing all the right things.

-As terran, particularly if you invest heavily in siege tanks, you can afford to expand TOWARDS your opponent instead of finding out-of-the-way expos. Terran Mech is king of screaming in the face of the opponent "I'm taking this base and there's not a damn thing you can do about it" as you crawl closer to them. The problem with grabbing an expansion tucked away somewhere is that you have to dedicate defenses to it that can't also double as part of your standing army. Units whose only job is to sit at base and prevent shenanigans make your main army exactly that much weaker than it should be.

-A friend of mine whose much better than me has a rule of thumb I'll pass on to you: for every base you have actively mining, you can support 4 "stuff". 2 barracks+factory+starport, 2 barracks+2 factory, etc. To a lesser extent, you can substitute tech in this rough rule of thumb. 2 barracks + factory + "lots of upgrades/research". It doesn't always work out perfectly (I wouldn't suggest 1-basing with 1 barracks + 3x factories unless you know what you're doing) but that's why it's just a rule of thumb. This formula carries over to protoss relatively well, too.

-Build more SCVs. It takes 30 to run an expansion optimally. If you have over 30, it doesn't mean you should stop building SCVs. It means grab an expo (if you don't have one already).

I probably have more...

I like to build 9 SCVs, build the Barracks, build another SCV, build the supply depot, and build the 11th while the depot is being built. Then I start pushing out marines while building over the geysers and most likely another barracks. At that point I'll upgrade the CC and scan.

To defend against a rush you've got to build like you're about to rush. Keep pushing out marines and maybe a handful of marauders while building five or six siege tanks. This way you can push up on anybody's base with the tanks while giving them LOS by removing the fog with the marines. If they attempt to defend with melee units, run back to the tanks to give them time to fire on them without hitting the marines.