Cheesy Strategy

have you tired building walls on top of metal spots near the enemy base?
it is worse than mex wrecks that need to be reclaimed manually which takes a good amount of time + energy.
trying to destroy it will require some good fire power as well which is worse.
for 150 metal, it is worth it, hehe

but it is hard to pull off in a heated competitive play.

having said that, should it be allowed in the first place, I mean, should metal spots deny building anything on top of them except for Mexes?

what do you think? has anyone tried it?

Interesting strategy... get a fabber in close... cheap strategy though.

Probably should have it so only metal extractors can be built on metal spots.

If he reclaims the wall he gets the full cost of the wall in metal.

This is a stupid idea.

It still requires lots of micro to get rid of them. And since walls only cost 150 metal, that isn't much.

A basic metal extractor provides 7 metal a second. So reclaiming the wall is the equivalent of 21.5 seconds of metal extracting. Sure, you'd get a surplus if you were to do it quickly, but that's time away from other things and is probably ultimately a loss due to the time investments distracting you from combat and slowing down your expansion.

A missile defense tower only costs 300 metal to build, which is the cost of 2 walls (duh). A better strategy than building a wall would be to build one of those on top of the metal spot. Then the player has to destroy the tower, reclaim the wreck, then build the metal extractor.

Neither are an overly strong strategy, but still an annoying one.

Ultimately though, it won't be too much of an issue when we can build stuff on top of wrecks and units will automatically reclaim the wreckage.

Walls are cheap. You also have to scout it out first, then reclaim it, and then build your metal extractor. You can't que any of the orders up.

What I see happening is a group of fabbers running from wall to wall after finding out they can't build there. When the player spots this he will have to reclaim the walls. Then he will have to que up metal extractors after the walls are removed.

Is this doable? It is often hard enough to get your engineers to your own spots without being raided to death. You want to send them to enemy mex? How? Air workers maybe? But those will only work if your opponent doesnt have air himself.

Anyway I think walls are currently a bit broken anway. They should have less impact on targetting and be much cheaper. Look at how FA does walls: 4k hp, less than 5 metal build costs. Can be reclaimed by workers in a second or two. If that reclaim could happen automatically building walls on enemy mex spots would have no effect whatsoever.
Maybe keep the current "high" walls as a protection against shots that is more expensive though.

I would imagine this would be a gimmick more to screw with enemy orders than actually physically being a hinderence. Ref to SC:FAF selen scouts on mex points. Easy enough to counter, it just forces more attention to be paid.

And then there's the problem of actually executing it... which has already been discussed.

I have done it with air early game. eng bots takes forever to reach that far. so that is not an option
works best when enemy neglects/delay air

and do not go directly near the enemy but one level behind his base, when he is about to expand further. a cheesy surprise

I think it's more effective to stop the engineers from ever building a masspoint, than it is to deny them the spots at the cost of giving metal to them.

Leaving a Dox at a metal spot is a vastly superior approach to building a wall there. The Dox can kill a constructor trying to build there, and if the enemy tries to remove your picket, then it can just leave. You are also only exposing a relatively expendable combat unit, and not a constructor, and it also serves as a scout to just leave it in place.

The same might be done with an air unit that could kill a constructor if you choose to start air.

In general, constructing a wall on top of a mex purely to annoy the opponent by forcing them to issue a reclaim order is not a good technique. They will happily take your metal.

It's not an extremely effective strategy. However, reclaiming the wall wouldn't produce that much metal and would require lots of micro to reclaim and then build a metal extractor. The end would be less metal and more time focused on reclaiming which would also be less time focused on combat and expansion.

Of course it's more effective. It's still an issue. And giving metal to them isn't actually as big of a deal as it seems. The amount of time to reclaim the wall, then build the extractor, then reclaim the next, etc, is ultimately a loss due to the micro required. 150 metal isn't that much. And if you already have a positive economy, then you might as well take that metal and flush it down the toilet.

Why not just build your own Mex? Not only will the enemy have to get rid of it, you will also get mass.

Building your own makes more sense

if you have the apm for it, its better to just start building something there with your aircon for a split second, then move onto the next. this is a good idea and i would hate you for it.

I dont think is anywhere near cheesy strategy. Cheesy strategy means a strategy which is very easy to do and is super effective if enemy doesnt counter it. So in my opinion making 7-10 bot/vehicle factories at start is more cheesy strategy than this as its very easy to do and it will work if enemy hasnt defense.

This will work only if enemy doesnt notice these walls. If enemy notices, he will get 10 metal per second for 15 seconds instead of 7 and you lose 150 metal for nothing. Enemy has 21 seconds time to reclaim the wall to be even. And when at start there is less to do before you have enough energy plants and metal extractors, it will be easy to notice these walls. So this is not cheesy strategy. If it would work, I'd say it would be intelligent strategy as it requires micro and macro to make it effective.

But its just better to make either metal extractor/missile tower/dox/ant/radar. The strategy is meant to get better economy than your enemy so making metal extractor yourself will be more reasonable. Missile Tower would deny any engineers and it would cost more metal to destroy missile tower with doxes/ants than missile tower costs itself or with laser tower. Dox/Ant would deny all engineers and could move between metal spots, but it would require more micro. Radar would give good information and maybe spot some enemy armies.

As stated earlier, the total metal loss would be greater due to the walls and the level of micro required to clear them. And if you have a positive economy, then any metal you reclaim is 100% worthless. All the while the defender is having to focus on the timely process of clearing the walls and is distracted from combat.

I understand, but you still have 21 seconds time to react to be even. Do you really let your engineers alone for over 30 seconds at start? I can understand at middle/late game when they are constructing something, but not at start. I even notice if someone is building a metal extractor and I can reclaim his engineer and then the unbuilt metal extractor and then build my own (or usually radar + missile tower first in this case). Also its very unlike you have positive economy at start (nor shouldnt ever have). In my opinion, first 5 minutes you have nearly nothing to do but harass or scout. You can queue up everything else, but I dont myself usually queue that much extractors at start just because of this kind of things. I dont want my engineers to travel around a planet before they have done their tasks in order.

It needs one button and mouse click to reclaim the wall, then you can check it 15 seconds later and build the metal extractor. Takes about 2 seconds and you can continue whatever you were doing, harassment with bots or something.

"at the start" - this wouldn't happen.
When first contact is established and you have many fabbers going here there and everywhere? Not as easy/clear cut as you make it out to be.

It's still a decent amount of micro and you have the added time of however long the fabricator is idle while you're elsewhere and now the metal extractor is delayed even further. And again, if you have positive metal, any metal you reclaim is 100% worthless. It takes more time than what you're bringing up to micro this scenario. If you manually queue up a metal extractor every time you finish an old one, you're expanding too slowly.

That level of micro would be an issue for me because I am doing so many things at once. Something that involves that much micro would take up a bunch of my time and would hinder my attacking and expansion.

I understand the point and its not bad strategy, but in my opinion it will mess your game alot of more if enemy just put one unit (Dox/Ant) at the metal spot or build missile tower. Even when walls are cheaper but still. The wall is easily reclaimed, its like a free metal delivery in package for you to open.
I queue up mexes but not many far away from each other because I have found it as a problem if someone have already built mexes on the spots. If someone say this needs lot of micro, then he hasnt clearly played Starcraft at all. Even first two minutes requires more micro in Starcraft than this requires at 10 minutes. But this requires more micro after 30-40 minutes than Starcraft after 30 minutes. So early game is very easy but late game is very hard. But of course you cant entirely compare Starcraft and these games.

Also I've noticed its not wise to expand too much, but instead get about 10-15 mexes and start building advanced mexes then. Alot of easier to defend and most of time its even more efficient if you have already built defense around your current mexes etc. To control 10-15 mexes is pretty easy (or depends on) and therefore it wouldnt need that much attention/micro to reclaim any wall built on them as you can see all those 10-15 metal spots from orbital view. After that everything becomes messy and hard to control.

Let this be my opinion, maybe it may change when I actually meet someone doing it against me