Terran Final
When the game is in it's late stage, Terrans
become very powerful. Just by using battlecruisers, tanks or even just
marines, you'll sometimes be able to completely crush your opponent. I
mentioned marines because if you upgrade them to their maximum (also range
and stimpack) you will have so powerful units that can crush even zealots
in overwhelming numbers. If you have played correctly in the middle game
stage, you shouldn't have much trouble here. If you played against someone
with the same skills as you, however, it is difficult to say when to attack.
Roughly, you two will have very similar unit count, meaning if you do attack
you will be overpowered until your troops reach the enemy. In this case
you will need to rally on some different attacking strategies such as the
ones I will mention here.
General Flanking
You all probably know what is considered
by flanking. However, a common mistake is splitting your army in two parts
and attacking different places. The most important thing in flanking is
unit the choice - you will have to use 4-5 stronger units to attack an
expansion while with your main force you are ready to crush your enemy.
I usually use 3 tanks with 2 cloaked wraiths, although not so cheap, this
is a powerful flanking group. When 3 tanks starts shooting from the distance,
most of the players will drag their units to them in which case I unsiege
them and flee to different sides. The sam moment I begin to attack with
cloaked wraiths, forcing him to bring an detector and some more units.
When my wraiths are about to be destroyed I commence my main attack on
his main base. In this case, I will severely cripple him until his units
show up. Following is retreat (if my forces tend to be overwhelmed) and
while his forces are following mine I usually do a drop consisted of 12
marines and 4 medics with whom I destroy his crucial buildings (cybernetics
bay/pylons/forge, spawning pool/hydralisk den/spire, academy/command centres).
In this moment, he would be just in front of my base and with some micromanagment
with siege tanks/bunkers/yamato and with units build in the meantime I
would usually beat my opponent.
Using the DropShip
Drop ship can be used in many different
ways as can be any transporter unit. If you plan an attack you can use
your dropships for flanking - bring 2-3 dropships within your enemy's sight
range and do a scanner sweep as you would do if you were preparing your
main attack. If and/or when you see his forces coming, do your main attack.
This will usually give you a distinct advantage over your enemy and lead
you to victory. Other use of the dropships would be the real drops :).
A single drop would probably be easily killed but if you'd do a drop on
every expansion your enemy has, it would be much better, especially if
done in completely same time. For protection, you can bring one wraith
with you what works pretty well combined with scanner sweeps.
Marines Push
This isn't really a late game tactic but
it usually tends to drag into it. After you build two barracks in the beginning,
expand, build refinery, academy and comsat. Then build two more barracks
and expand. Build two more barracks and expand (you see the pattern now),
and so on. The thing about marine push is that you constantly keep cranking
marines in all of your barracks and attack whenever you have 12 of them.
This will usually force your opponent to go all out defence and probably,
he'll be afraid to expand. When he does get the force necessary to expand,
you'll already have 3-4 expansions and 6-8 barracks. Now just pile up 48
marines and 2-3 tanks and the game is yours.
Terran Spells
Terrans have very useful spells. I mention
something about irradiate before. Another very useful spell is the lockdown.
Terran worst enemies - carriers, arbiters, reavers, battlecruisers, tanks,
and other mechanical units can be easily stopped and killed. Especially
usefull if your enemy is going for a drop - with 2-3 ghosts you can split
his force to 2, or even completely stop him. Medic has a few useful spells,
in the first place healing. Blinding, sometimes good, has very limited
use. You can use it to blind your opponent's detectors, but on the other
hand, terrans don't have much powerful cloaked units. Perhaps the best
use of it is on reaver drop - you can blind the shuttle and then both reavers,
what should slow it quite a bit. EMP shockwave is sometimes an useful spell,
especially against protoss. The best it's use is if you see a packed group
of corsairs approaching your position you can both drain all of their energy
and shields as well. Also for packed groups of ground forces, EMP shockwave
works pretty good in combination with irradiate. Protection field created
by Science Vessel is one nice but not so good spell, it gives the affected
unit a 250 HP for an period of time. This can be useful for scouting, then
againt there's comsat for this. If used in attacks, these added 250 HP
usually won't even be noticed.
