Veeger's Build Orders

[Veeger]

Okay, this is Veeger-specific advise. :cool:

I typically play Terran, though I admit my personal favorite has always been Protoss. But, again, that was when using cheats, and I can imagine Protoss is probably a bit more challenging than Terrans, so let's just stick with Terran for the time being. I'll explore Protoss at a later time.

Okay, a few beginning questions, though you are free to expand upon any area you have noticed during your gameplay that may help a rookie, like myself.

1: Stim packs -- what are their affects, and how long do they last?

2: Vultures -- how effective would you rank them? I read people raving about them all the time, but they never pay off for me. I always end up losing the whole team, and at the same time reveal the direction of my base to the computer (it's probably not true, but I like to believe that the computer isn't already pre-programmed with the location of each starting base calculated into its attack parameters)

3: What is a good Terran vs. Protoss assault plan, ie: should I focus more on tanks, Goliaths, or both equally? I've learned from my own experiences that marines alone are not going to work, and I've also learned that I absolutely must get my first barracks up sooner than build 8. I tried that the other day, and got killed by three (3) Zealots. I only had two marines, who died immediately, and though I kept pumping them out as quickly as I could, they killed the marines before they could serve much use.

[blupp74]

1: Stim packs -- what are their affects, and how long do they last?


Effect: "Holy crap them zerglings splatter like bugs in a fan on crack!".
Last: Dunno. 10 seconds, maybe? But keep your medics around, and you can stim again and again and again and again and again...but not again, because your medics are out of energy now. But all zergs are dead anyway.


2: Vultures -- how effective would you rank them? I read people raving about them all the time, but they never pay off for me. I always end up losing the whole team, and at the same time reveal the direction of my base to the computer (it's probably not true, but I like to believe that the computer isn't already pre-programmed with the location of each starting base calculated into its attack parameters)


This is 30% from experience, and 70% from watching replays, but against Protoss they rock. Not dragoons though, but zealots. And they kill probes (or workers in general) like crazy. Plus the mines which is great for large boooms and even scouting. Against Terran they can be good to counter other vultures, but I don't find them very effective against tanks and goliaths (they slaughter marines like crazy though). Against Zerg...well...mines can come in handy...and they're kinda ok against zerglings, but pretty much suck against anything else.


3: What is a good Terran vs. Protoss assault plan, ie: should I focus more on tanks, Goliaths, or both equally? I've learned from my own experiences that marines alone are not going to work, and I've also learned that I absolutely must get my first barracks up sooner than build 8. I tried that the other day, and got killed by three (3) Zealots. I only had two marines, who died immediately, and though I kept pumping them out as quickly as I could, they killed the marines before they could serve much use.

Judging from "pro" replays, tanks and vultures seems to be the way to go.
Marines may work a little early game against zealots and dragoons, but once P gets templars they're nothing but meat to the grinder.
I personally like throwing atleast a few goliaths into the mix, but then again I'm not very good at pushing tanks. I usually tend to go for drops, with tanks and vultures.

Early game walling may help. The zealots can't get in, so they have to go at the wall (depots, barracks, usually). Have an SCV there to repair it, while your marines stay behind the wall and fire at the zealots. When the dragoons start coming, you should have tanks, because they can get to your marines AND scv's, so repairing won't really work then.

There are a few alternatives, so I suggest watching replays.

[Veeger]

Thank you, Blupp.

Midnight brought up another issue in my "confession" topic (dang it! You b@$!@&%$ have me saying "thread" now!!). How do you "hotkey"? I know what the term means, I just don't remember seeing anything about doing so in the manual. When I get home, I'll double check it (I think I've got it . . . somewhere . . .), but I figured asking couldn't hurt.

[lammas]

select a building or group of units and press ctrl and 1(or 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0) simultaniusly. now when u pres 1 again it will choose that building or group of units.

2. they work well in tvp and tvt, tho you should make gol tank in tvt untill youll learn basics.

3. no dont make rax at 8. basic build is 9suply 10rax 12gas 15suply 16fac 18 fac. Use wall as blup said.

[MidnightGladius]

1. Stimpacks increase rate of fire by more than double and last for 10 game seconds.

2. Vultures are an absolute must TvP, and are great TvT if used well. With mines, they can kill Dragoons easily (run up right next to them, plant mines, and run away; you'll take some damage, but it's worth it), and they're faster and can easily kill zealots by FF. Also, Vultures act as a buffer for your tank push, so that their speedy zealots can't run directly into your tanks and start annihilating them.

In TvT, they're generally used against tank/goli in the same way as you use them against dragoons. Basically, you end up with lots of unused minerals from pumping mainly Tanks, and it's much better to have 2 vultures than 3 marines.

In general, they rock at scouting expos (have them patrol between them, and possibly lay a mine at each), are great for worker-killing raids/drops, and can also be used in a variety of other ways.

3. You ought to try playing on maps with a choke point so that you can wall, but if you insist on open maps...

Place your buildings as close together as possible, and go the normal 8depot 10rax 12ref build. Once the barracks is done, build a bunker so that it covers all of your buildings, as well as your mineral line. If this is impossible, get two, and repair as necessary when they attack. While doing this, tech to factories.

You're generally going to use mostly tank/vult, golis being used only when they come up with carriers and/or arbiters. Generally, you would have tanks FF on dragoons and vultures FF on zealots. Goliaths aren't capable of doing as much damage ground-to-ground and die pretty badly against zeals/goons/dts.

If you know how to Tank Push, then do that. If not, here's how it works:

If you went the normal 2fact build, you'll wait until you get about 8 tanks before you roll out. If you went gundam (see Ktan's BO thread), you should have done so way earlier. Anyways, basically, you use the idea of forward defense. Siege up your tanks, lay mines ahead of them, use a floating Ebay to increase your sight range for tanks, and build turrets for shuttles/DTs. If there is no resistance, unsiege the back half of the tanks and move them ahead, sieging again. Repeat the mine/ebay/turret process. Continue until you have your army at their natural chokepoint and a stranglehold on them economically. After they can't get out, destroy their expansions in turn, and they'll usually type out and leave.

[ShadeZ]

Protoss are acually less challenging then terrans for beginners.

Vultures are good in packs with speed and mines speed helps to take out zealots with a bit of micro and mines is good for taking goons. Build tanks also for against protoss as they're much better at taking out goons and can stop the army from just attacking. goliaths shouldn't be used till the toss goes carriers or arbiters, which happens late game, if at all.

[LordOfNukes]

Shields always take full damage from attacks regardless of attack types, so a Vulture will deal 20 damage a second to the shields of a Protoss unit. The fact that Vultures pwn shields and that Mines kick ass makes Vultures necessary versus Protoss.

[WickedImposter]

no dont make rax at 8. basic build is 9suply 10rax 12gas 15suply 16fac 18 fac. Use wall as blup said.

lol. thats the basic? normally mine is like 9 supply 11 supply 12 rax or something. but thanks for giving me that advice lammas.

[U-238]

Yea that's basic. Your build has waaay to much supply at the begining. That's too much of a waste of minerals early on.

[MidnightGladius]

Yeah, why would you need 26 units of supply so early when you only have 14?

[WickedImposter]

i guess your right. usually i do those 2 supplies at wallin and a rax after. but i know i should change that now.

btw veeger, vultures are highly efffective against protoss. not fo rthe vulture it self, but for the mines. your pretty much paying 25 mins per mine, with the vulture as an extra. and the vulture is good tank cover against zlots

edit: wait what if your walling in? should you still do supply at 15 or earlier?

[MidnightGladius]

9depot, 10rax, 15depot to complete the wall. What's so hard to understand about that?

Oh, and Vultures are useful besides mines - they are excellent for scouting, raiding mineral lines (FF on the workers), and killing zealots/HTs.

[Veeger]

Midnight, its hard to understand because the "wall" using a barracks as part of it doesn't prevent Zealots from getting inside the base, which is the whole point (as far as I understood) behind creating this "wall" in the first place. I even tried placing a third depot off-center, so that when the Zealot walked down between the barracks and the first depot, it would meet the front of the third depot, but it still just walked around it.

The one advantage, I admit, is that instead of coming into your base in a line, they have to do it single file, which can help your marines attack them one at a time, it is just I think referring to this as a "wall" is a little misleading. Unless you take the angle that it is a true "wall", in that it is up but ants can still get into your house (lol).

[MidnightGladius]

Look, once I get my SC back, I can prove it to you in-game, but until then, you'll have to trust me on it when I say that it IS possible to make a wall that Zealots cannot go through. I've been doing it for months, and it's saved me a lot of losses in TvP games.

[Veeger]

Don't worry about that -- I'll run down to Tim's and get brood war back this afternoon. :) We can play tonight, how about that?

[hammocksleeper]

Vultures+tanks (micro micro micro) is generally better for fighting toss than gollies+tanks. Gollies+tanks is for TvT, mostly. Stimps are for zerglings. That's my experience with success, at least.

Also, the computer knows at all times exactly where your base is, but in a sort of roundabout way. He can't point on the map and say "your base is here" (not to mention, you couldn't ask him that question because he's just a computer). But the AI just has to go "attack enemy" and his units go straight for you; they don't have to search around the map until they find you. Does that make sense?

[Siege_Commander]

Ive made a lot of sucessful wall ins. Its funny, cuz one time i made another depot after the rax even tough I didn't need to, and when his probe got there iss ran around in circles for like 3 seconds. Then turned away.and the piont of the wall in is to hide to tech away from your opponent.imean, if your gonna 4 gol drop them, and you wall in correctly, they might not see it coming which could possible kill all there workers. Burt if you didn't wall in and they saw you teching to a drop, they would have either put up turrets or bunks.

[U-238]

Don't worry about that -- I'll run down to Tim's and get brood war back this afternoon. We can play tonight, how about that?

Then you'd better start dling the BW patch this mornin.

Wallins are effective believe me. They're no effective though on maps like challenger. Like I said try a map like Lost Temple (in the "ladder" folder when picking your maps) and try a wallin at the top of your ramp. I had a deal on LT about proper walls showing exactly how they were supposed to be done I'll see if I can't find it.

[Veeger]

Where can I find this patch?

[U-238]

Broodwar Patch (http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/broodwar/patches/PC/BW-114.exe)

Regular Starcraft Patch (http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/starcraft/patches/PC/SC-114.exe)

If you're going to play broodwar just get the broodwar patch and don't bother with the Regular starcraft one.

[Skullflower]

arent firebats effective against zealots early in the game?

[MidnightGladius]

Isn't building an academy early in the game, TvP, useless?

[Veeger]

Why would the academy be useless? It may not be as useful as against Zerg or Terran, but certainly not useless.

[Veeger]

It only took me an hour and a half. On dial-up. :)

[WickedImposter]

i agree with middy. mmf is useless against protoss. its more effective to use that 150 mins to get a head start on vultures or something.

[Veeger]

I've already PMed you, U-238, but I want to publically defame you ( :) )

Screw you. I downloaded the patch, wasted an hour and a half of game time, and now the program will no longer load. *gives middle finger*

[hammocksleeper]

Why would the academy be useless? It may not be as useful as against Zerg or Terran, but certainly not useless.


It's not useless, but it's certainly a misallocation of resources.

[MidnightGladius]

And since when did hammocksleeper know what he's talking about in regards to SC?! What's next, Bill Clinton making an account and ranting about the imbal of PvZ?

Veeger, the reason why it's useless is that it sets you back on Factory and vehicle production that is usually necessary to beat a standard Protoss player. The infantry upgrades within become completely useless as soon as they find it out and get reavers/storm. Both of those tear up infantry like crazy.

And while comsat is nice, it's not worth delaying the Factory. You can always get it later.

[U-238]

hammocks been around middy. He knows a little bit.

[MidnightGladius]

Weird; I've never seen him post in here before this thread. : shrug :

[Veeger]

Well, Gordo had a good idea -- I tried downloading the SC113e patch, and then redownload the 114 patch through the program.

That seemed to work at first -- but the BNupdate.exe is generating problems, and shuts down each time. At this rate, I don't see how I can possibly play online at the moment. However, I will attempt to contact Blizzard, and see what response I can get.