Terran vs Terran Counter

The Thor unit is under heavy debate, personally i love this unit. However i was having a debate with a fellow player over Bnet yesterday. He was talking about the final sequence in the Terran demo at blizzcon. His point was that a well balanced Terran army will be very difficult to counter when playing vs Terran. Personally i thought how so since you have the same units etc. The argument was that once you get Thors in range its gg and this will be the main tactic. I disagree.

This was his imaginary army: Marines x30 Medics x10 Vikings x10 Thors x4 BCs x4 Siege Tanks x8 and a science vessel/nomad. His tactic was to do that same as in that last sequence of the Terran demo. Harass with marines, bcs etc deply Thors ability then siege the base out (almost the same). He honestly believed you could not be beaten in this situation with out having the same army and it would be a battle of Thors for the win

I told him i reckon i could wipe out his force without using Thors and only half his units.

My army: BC x2 (yamato) Ghosts x4 (2x Nuke, 2x Drop pod) Banshee x6 siege tank x4 Vikingsx4

This is my plan Using the early detection radar you could see the army coming in, quickly sensor sweep showing you what u have to fight. Instantly send your BCs to the side and yamato his Science vessel asap if you can retreat your Bcs ( get energy back at star base) if you can't Force target his Bcs as a distraction. Next bring in you ghosts set a nuke behind his line of advance and one in from of his line so the nukes cover a wide range. At this point his Thors and heavy units are out of range of your base and units but are to slow to be of any use. He has two options continue forwards and loose half his aamy or retreat and do the same. Chances are he will go both ways and hope there is only one nuke, or charge towrads your base, either way he lose. you already have your Siege tanks deployed so anything left over will have to flee, cloaked banshees can mop up any ground units left over. Only threat now is vikings and a couple of Bcs. he cant land his Vikings because banshee and siege so they are no good! His Bcs may be a problem but chances are you will have enough time to counter. The drop pods are used if the nukes don't kill enough. Other wise you can save them for counter/harass.

Nukes seem allot easier to build in SC2 without having to have a command center for everyone. Bring multiple science vessels? Probably the best option, but really just target them asap and take them out first. The key is to move fast get those nukes down. Nukes plus banshee is going to be great.

Even consider this, you place you nukes to close and they can retreat. Cloak banshees swoop in behind and lay waste drop pods down slow there movment. If it was me i would not walk through that kind fire and move another direction, boom nukes lay waste.

Terran detector towers cant attack anymore! So it will be harder to push the map as banshees are the number one counter for this. Fast/high damage and cloak.

I am sure there is a better way?

and what so scary about a THOR, they are slow big and easy to kill!?

[Kyoske]

Well the lay out sounds fine in a perfect world where one tactician catches every move the other is going to make. But #1 there are no Science vessels anymore, #2 ya nukes may seem easy but from the many many times I played the demo at BlizzCon the nukes didn't seem as overwhelmingly power full as they are in SC1,not to mention that it's just as hard to get them now as it was in the first game, just takes a different building. Said building is able to be created at about the same point you could snag nukes in the first game. (correct me if I'm wrong on the building order I'm not as read up on Terran as the other 2 races)

But the game has a long way to go. As the developers said there is a counter to ever unit, meaning it will be a good balance (or so I hope)

Kyoske

P.S. I was always a Zerg man myself ^__-

[Cotton]

Nomads are nice over science vessels in one important aspect, they are cheap and build fast. So it is very likely that a terran army of that size will have multiple detectors. Even if all that fails you still have your scanner to detect stealth. Getting a nuke off in that situation with even an average player is unlikely.

I think people give thors, much like motherships to much credit. Thors are good for one thing sieging buildings, and a limited amount of anti-air. There damage to units is much lower than to buildings even with the barrage ability. However its the turning radius that hurts the most, retargeting takes forever, and a few spread out siege tanks will take down a thor before the thor can even kill one.

The thor is a support unit meant to allow faster take downs of buildings or to break heavy static defenses like barracks+supply depots+siege tanks, on its own it does very poorly, even against low tech units.

I also don't think you are giving the banshees enough credit, because they are siege tank rape machines. You fly in a pack of banshees until they are on top of the siege tanks and to close to be attacked in siege mode. Drop in ground mode blast a few apart then lift off before your enemy can get them out of siege mode to do any real damage.

The nukes are kind of interesting now, in sc1 you had to build a science lab and a spec ops addon to build ghost, then another nuke addon to your command cent for the nuke. In SC2 you build a shadow labs which unlocks the nuke, and you have to add a tech lab to your barracks to build the ghost. So I guess you have one less addon to build before you can make nukes. But they come out a bit faster because you can build the shadowlabs and the tech addon at the same time instead of having to wait for the science lab and addon to finsih before making the nuke addon. So it is a bit faster now to get nukes. But they are a smaller radius so not as devastating as in SC1, and you really need two nukes to gain the same effect as in SC1. So that's two shadowlabs and more resources.


Anyway I'm rambling now, I hope all that gives you some more insight on how that strategy works.