Yeah, I sorta forgot about this thread, so apologies for the late reply.
I don't have too much to say about your question since ptgatsby said plenty of it.
If you manage to find a unprepared or damadged terran you can win without too much problems with a help of defilers. Just to be clear.
But there are some tricks left. Medics have restore ability so if you have 3medics under 3 numbers you can restore 15 plagued units. Also only a fool has a 5+ Science vessels togather.
And yet, many professional Korean players do exactly that. Yes, it's generally not advisable to stack your troops, especially casters, but they do it for ease of use. It's easier to control them if their in a group, and considering how much gymnastics they do with them, to even try with two groups is insane. Same principle works for mutalisk stacking (well, not quite, due to the focus fire aspect). Rarely do you see them microing two groups of mutas simultaneously. They generally use only one group at a time and rotate as they get damaged. To use two would be way too hard, unless you're willing to sacrifice a lot of effectiveness.
Also dark swarm does not work so good if you know one trick with tanks. Dark swarm works on a principle that shooter miiss it is target and hits ground infront of a target. But if you order tanks that they don't shoot at the first row dark swarm will not be that much useful. Plus there is defensive matrix to protect your first row.
What? Not sure what exactly your saying here. Are you saying, if I have a formation like this:
X/Y = random unit
XY
XY
XY
XY
all under dark swarm, then if you target the Xs, it'll hit the Ys? Because that's just blatantly false. Anything under the swarm is immune to direct ranged fire (but not splash).
Or you can do something else. It is not hard to have 3 vultures around since they cost only 75 minerals. Zerg often throws dark swarm infront of you. So you can rush in and place spider mines. The zerg will not be able to destroy them with missle attacks and melee attackers will trigger them. So the best for the zerg is to call off the attack.
That's true. Ideally Zerg can pick off the vultures before they do that, but sometimes they can't and they'll be forced into a temporary retreat. Of course, if you have Lurkers, then there's a good chance the mines will be destroyed in the cross fire before they have a chance to blow up.
But sice there isn't that much said about ghosts I will say something.
I will share some tricks.
People ususlly build only few of them. But they are cheap 25 minerals which is 3 times cheeper then hydralisk and 75 gas.
People say that they have very small damage but that depends on what they are shooting at.
10 grosts are very good in taking down zealots and DTs that are runing at your tanks. The can create quite large damadge to protoss plasma shields.
Ghosts can assasinate HT and defilers very easy in opponent is not careful. They are good for shooting down the scourges and infested terrans.
the are not even that bad against mutalisks if there is too much of them.
Plus lockdown for mechanical units. Since they are cheap, have a big sight and they are invisible they are good scouts
I said that my ghost can drive people insane.
If you play 1vs1 and you play only with nukes you will probably lose.
Once people scan that there is no ghosst they can deside to attack with something more expensive and machanical. But your ghosts can be hidden in bunkers and dropships.
Not to mention below lift off buldings.
Yeah, that's all true. They are kinda vulnerable though, but cheap as you said.
You say that you can prevent nuking with too much trouble. Which is true if you use very primitive tactics.
On many places there are lines of minerals and then there is a cliff behind them. You can target on the cliff so he/she will not be able to see the dot even of it is very close to workers.
Or you can hide the gost below a dropship so they will need to destroy the dropship first.
Also it would not hurt that you have a medic(or two) with the ghost for heeling. On the battle net no one uses the optical flair ability. But with this you can knock out detector what means that there is no one to detect the ghost. Or you can have a ghost or two extra so that they can lockdown threats. Also you can have a science vessel behind so that the enemy does not see it. But if situation gets critical you can always use defensive matrix and if needed another one.
Hah, funny. Especially as Zerg, I have overlords practically everywhere all around my bases. I don't even need to see the dot, as I can see the ghost itself, and it probably died to a sunken that I put next to the cliff for the express purpose of preventing drops. As Protoss and Terran, I make sure to have cannons/turrets around my base to prevent this kind of stuff. And if your using lockdown, then that just makes it even easier to find your nuker, and bring in some of the random troops that I'm constantly making in my base to kill it.
Usually protoss in late game buid a lot of pylons around important targets.
But the things is that ghosts can hide between them and use them as protection from many protoss units. Plus you can have a few ghost so you can lockdown something in the process.
I suppose that would be true, except that if you can manage to get a unit unharmed into their base that late into the game, then you've probably already won the battle.
When zerg attacks fortified terran base with a huge horde they will use dark swarm. but when attack starts target over a dark swarm. The first line of the horde will come in conntact with you so the middle part whill have no where to go since the end of the horde will still want to go to atteck.
But the player can't change orders so fast to so many units. Which means that units can get stuck since they want to go to in different directions.
With some luck you can kill large amount of units this way. Also the orange lo dark swarm cloud is not helping you to notice the dot.
I'm really not sure at all what your trying to say here. It's pretty easy to lay down multiple dark swarms to cover the majority of your army. Plus generally, a competent Zerg player will attack from many angles, and his army will not clog up because of that. As for nukes, it's likely that defensive nuking is the best use of them, but in this case, still not very good. The Zerg army is fast enough that it can fully retreat out of range of a nuke in just a few seconds. And if your nuking the dark swarm, then you'd be nuking your own troops, as Zerg will put the swarm over your troops to protect his melee units. All assuming the Ghost isn't accidentally caught in lurker or mutalisk crossfire, and if I don't spot it with the overlord that I'm sure to bring along.
There in one more trick. When you target an air unit there is no dot!
Feel free to check this one.
Not true. There is a dot, it's just hidden below the air unit. If you move the unit, then the dot is revealed.
Usually zerg has a large group of unprotected overlords around his workers. So you can drop a ghost somewhere behind and place a ghost below his/her overlords and place a dot on them. Since there is no dot you have a realisitic
chances that you will blow up overlords and some workers.
You can send a wraith in as a distraction but what you are actually doing is hidding a dot with you own wraith.
I'm not sure what caliber of opponents your facing, but any competent player will have defenses set up at his mineral line. Your ghost will easily be killed by the sunkens that I'm sure to have. And if I don't have defenses, why even bother nuking, when you could do much more damage with a group of MnMs, or vultures, or wraiths, or practically anything.
You can even do something more sinister. If you have enough resources you can target a flat land for a nuclear strike. But you enemy will be sweating a lot since there is not dot and the clock is ticking. Make sure that about 50% of nukes are going is his/her direction (with a random schedule of course).
Believe me after a few minutes of this their ability to think straight will drop for observable amount.
Not to mention that while they search for the dot they will never find you can attack with cloaked wraiths somwhere or tenk drop without too much problems.
I have watched my replys of 4vs4 games and everytime you lunch a nuke the other side stops complety in everything they are doing to search for that dot.
So if you manage to build 3 silos you can totally distrupt all of their plans and tactics.
This is it.
That would be insanely expensive though. Plus again, any competent player will have enough defenses at his base that he has to do no more than a cursory examination, then move on his way. And with all the money your spending on nukes that won't do anything, he will likely have a massive econ advantage over you, and be able to easily outproduce you.
On a related note, I managed to fix my StarCraft. I can play again, weee!