Drops Terran! Grrr!

godspal

I am finding it very difficult to fend off Terran Drops, I have one replay thats typical of what happens to me. I am fighting, or counter-attacking, and then I realise I have lost two bases.
I know I should be looking at the mini-map more, but is there any other I could shoot down a dropping terran?

Orizio

Mutas and a good spread of overlords.

Orizio

Watched the replay, drops were the least of your problems.

1. You could have 5-6 bases by the time he attacked.

2. Rally your army to the same spot, rather then three different places.

3. When you attack, attack with everything at the same time. And attack from different angles. And get loads more banelings.

4. Harass with mutas.

5. Infester/broods kills his army comp completely.

6. Overlords at 12 and 6 o'clock would have killed off his drops.

Laisurg

throw overlords around the place and make a few extra queens and spread creep all over the shop, few overlords might get picked off but it's far better than a sneaky drop that takes out half your drones.

pixelburp

I haven't seen your replay, but I'm guessing from the replies that you're a zerg? In which case, on the parts of the map without creep spread, there should be an overlord sitting giving you visibility. Multiple 'lords staggered to give you overlapping vision, and in particular place them where a sneaky medivac might try and get in (so usually around the edge of the map in many cases)

Zombrex

If you suspect drops it is generally a good idea to keep some units in your base near your minerals, no matter what race you are playing. Zerglings are good for Zerg, a few seiged up tank is great for Terran.

As Terran drops his units are off loaded one at a time. This makes them vulnerable to attack as being off loaded.

A swarm of zerglings will have a drop of marines dead before they hit the floor. Make sure you have creep between all your bases and zergling speed, this will allow you to get zerglings to the drop point very quickly.

Another thing that makes drops powerful is the medivacs heal the marines, so taking them out with some air makes drops more damaging for the Terran player.

Make sure you pull your workers out of the way as quickly as possible to limit the damage he can do from drops.

UnholyGregor

Contrary to popular belief, zerglings wont do sh1t to marine drops, especially if he does a 2medivac drop.The medivac healing will almost nullify the damage of your lings, so all your lings will try to kill 1 marine, being healed almost as fast as the lings max dps, giving the rest of his marines time to drop and get a good position. 16 marines with stim and medivacs will kill almost infinite zerglings in a good position. The only way to avoid this is to have maximum overlord spread and a flock of about 20 mutas. You gotta kill the medivacs as soon as possible, preferably loaded and en route to your base, and this should persuade the terrran to think twice about dropping again.

Of course, the threat of a drop is always present, so you need to always be watching the minimap, and keep in mind that the best time for terran to drop marines is while hes attacking your front, so your attention will be diverted. To deal with this your gonna have to pull about 10 lings and 3 or 4 banes+ your mutas, as the marines are nearly always gonna squeeze into a tight gap in your mineral line, to kill as many lings as possible, this makes it easy for them to be picked off with banelings, and the mutas are necessary to kill the medivac.Its very important to keep terrans medivac count as low as possible, and for every drop he makes, you gotta punish him.

As a general rule of thumb, you should remember that if the marines manage to land in your base without you noticing, your doing something horrifically wrong.

ps: if, due to some catastrophic mis-click, you lose your muta blob, you MUST rebuild them asap, as, without mutas, your gonna get abused by multi drops so hard.

pps: in the late game, where you have around 4-6 bases, and practically limitless minerals, its a good idea to make 4 or 5 spines around every mineral line, to delay drops as long as possible for your mutas to arrive to clean it up. This is super important in high base count games, as you will be spread very thin, and its easy for terran to drop 2 or 3 bases simultaneously.

Ppps: never think your too far ahead to lose to medivac drops. I cant count the number of times i have been on 4/5 bases v 2, destroyed the terran army, and got cocky. Its terrifying how fast terran can kill 2 or 3 bases with marine drops, and if your not careful, no matter how far ahead you are, terran can very easily turn certain defeat into an easy win if you dont respect the threat of medivacs.

B0X

2/3 banelings burrowed behind the mineral line, sweet jesus that's satisfying to watch.

Also, infestors, get that athletes foot everywhere. :pac:

Tenger

B0X wrote: »

2/3 banelings burrowed behind the mineral line, sweet jesus that's satisfying to watch.

Sneaky fecker......I love it.

Reminds me of burrowing Defilers in the path of attacking BC's/Carriers in Brood War

godspal

Okay I am not going to start a new thread. But how do you stop mass thors supported by Hellions?
I have only came across this build recently and, its, devastating to zerg. Ling/Roach/Muta/Infestor doesn't work. Pure Ling doesn't work. Ling/Roach doesn't work. I haven't tried infestor broodlord. But anytime I face this, it just rolls into my base and wipes me out.

EDIT: This build is done by turtling, and I have only came across it on the larger maps map such as shakuras plateau and Tal'darim Altar.

UnholyGregor

on maps like shakuras,where the terran turtles on 2 bases, kust expand everywhere. Since the terran usually waits til 200 supply to push out. This gives you tonnes of time to get a ridiculous economy up. By the time the terran pushes, you should have at least 5bases.

Ideally youl have broodlords to beat this army, they literally **** all over mass thors. But, if you dont have broodlords, mass ling muta can beat this, assuming you get a large enough magic box, and engage in ythe open, to get a good surround with lings, which are gonna need alot of upgrades to kill the thors.

pixelburp

UnholyGregor wrote: »

[...]By the time the terran pushes, you should have at least 5bases.[...]

Gonna hijack this thread a little and ask a quick question, which I asked before but didn't get an answer - how many bases should a Zerg typically have fully mined? Obviously at least 2 with 16 drones on each mineral line (+12 on the 4 gases), but after that? Am never sure exactly when to stop making drones and concentrate on an army ...

Xios

Have 2 or 3 command groups of 20 lings, that way you can have them split easily to two drops, 20 should be enough to kill the marines that aren't micro'd, or at least run the away for a moment, even better is to have an infestor sitting in your main + expansion, fungal the rines and send in lings.

Edit/ Always have your queen shoot the medivac, after a few hits, he's gonna wanna send it away or lose it. Also, i would adopt a Destiny style approach to the game.
Lotsa lings, melee and armour upgrades, a lot of infestors, then tech to broodlords with 3/3 broodlings + fungal + neural parasite. Needs a good bit of micro, but man is it funny to see a large group of about 30 marines die to 2 fungals


Also, as destiny pointed out once, Terrans never scout just outside their ramp before sending out their army, then just clump them up and send em out. A great time to get off some awesome fungals.
3/3 cracklings are great for harassment late game. Every time he's attacking you, send 10/15 lings to one of his expos, just send them there, and shift+a at the mineral line, they do a lot of dmg fast.

godspal

pixelburp wrote: »

Gonna hijack this thread a little and ask a quick question, which I asked before but didn't get an answer - how many bases should a Zerg typically have fully mined? Obviously at least 2 with 16 drones on each mineral line (+12 on the 4 gases), but after that? Am never sure exactly when to stop making drones and concentrate on an army ...

This really depends on scouting IMO. You should be cutting drones to counter cheese. If you spot any timing attack. You should be splitting your larva into drones and units at 30-35 and put up Spines accordingly.
You should have apparently. 70-80 drones if you enter the late game. Thats about 3 1/2 bases. But I constantly forget, and usually by the end game I have around 3 bases saturated which is 66.

UnholyGregor

pixelburp wrote: »

Gonna hijack this thread a little and ask a quick question, which I asked before but didn't get an answer - how many bases should a Zerg typically have fully mined? Obviously at least 2 with 16 drones on each mineral line (+12 on the 4 gases), but after that? Am never sure exactly when to stop making drones and concentrate on an army ...

your gonna want about 70-80 drones maximum in any long game. Basically, for the first 10 mins of the game, you should only build attacking units if they are absolutely necessary, every ling or roach you build is a drone that isnt mining. After you get 3 bases fully saturated, its a good time to switch to mass unit production.
ps, a big problem alot of people have is late game, when losing builders to harassment, they dont rebuild the drones, since they have gone into ''unit producing mode'. this is a bad mindset, and you should always have a rough idea in your head of the amount of drones you have. at all times past the 15 min mark as zerg, you need at least 3 bases fully mining at any one time.

michaelyou

spread your overlords to get a good view for drops