A counter for T2 bombers: the "unit stream"

Since the Jan 16th patch made factories so much more efficient at cranking out units, I've been trying to do more "unit streams" -- something that was pretty standard in TA.

Build a bunch of factories.
Set them to attack-move to the middle of the enemy base.
Set unit production on a constant cycle more or less anti-air depending on what the enemy is using.
Send construction bots along the line to build radar and, as you get closer, artillery.

I've found that a line of T1 vehicle plants making ANTs Pounders and a line of T2 vehicle plants making Shellers works quite well. Feel free to experiment but the nice thing with shellers is that they can eventually get past any turret line. And Pounders have nice stats if you don't care how long it takes them to get there.

T2 bombers are murder on the usual unit blobs we attack with. They aren't very efficient against streams, though, as the streams are too spread out. With T1 anti-air in the stream you'll eventually shoot down the bombers but you can always back up the attack with fighter support and building flak down the line.

This strategy is contrary to the way you play most RTSs because most RTSs have finite resources on the map, meaning you don't want to waste units. In TA/PA, you never run out of resources so sending units streaming into a grinder is fine so long as they are doing damage.

You can also use nukes to break the defenses on the edge of someone's base to help your stream. Not making progress? Add factories! Stream more! Work harder on that forward artillery (Holkins). Be sure to claim all the metal within the stream too, as it will end up being fairly guarded by the stream. You should be expanding your metal and energy constantly because the stream requires very little oversight.

Typically enemies blob up their units and push back against the stream. You can send a few T2 bombers in to deal with their blob or basically just keep working on other things while the stream whittles them down (Shellers with radar sight are particularly good at working over any blobs that get in the way). As the enemy spends time microing his blob to fight your stream, you are building more energy, more metal, more factories and increasing your stream. (You can also build factories elsewhere and stream in from multiple directions.)

I find T2 bombers (and area-effect attacks in general) lose a lot of their strength against the stream. The best counter to a stream is probably another stream -- a well-maintained defensive line will work but repairing and rebuilding the line takes concentration that the stream doesn't take, so the guy building defenses is probably falling behind in metal and energy.

I haven't tried it 1v1 but its been working great in FFAs. As one enemy dies, I just select all my factories and direct the stream towards the next guy. It puts them on a non-stop defensive and a lot of them forget to attack my base because they are too busy trying to deal with the stream.

I've never really played this way since I played SC2 a lot and the focus was small units having powerful impacts.

I really want to try this on the next patch with all the changed numbers and balance passes and what not.

in reality Strean strat is not the best, but you can micro your mobiles AA so the T-2 bomber will hit less on every pass...

No if you have a Stream of units you will have less DPS than if you have they in Formation:

A stream is pretty Easy to counter with defenses though, especially if you have pelters backing up your turrets as they will take out mobile arty. If there's catapults it's game over for any kind of ground assault regardless of how you structure it.

I'm a proponent of strong defences but I think maybe they're actually a bit OP right now. The thing that shields provided was basically extra HP for turrets. Walls give 10x that right now, and turrets are worth tens and tens of ground units in a straight fight even without it, hundreds with. Compound that with extremely effective artillery support and units can't even get close before they're decimated, by which point defenses picks them off unharmed.

In supcom you could at least reasonably have a standoff with a large army against an entrenched line.

did you make that picture? because that was pretty fast (then again, i'm not a paint professional)

The point is to reduce your vulnerability to splash damage. Streaming units works very well in that area. Obviously a loosely packed formation is going to get crushed by a tightly packed phalanx, but that's not the point of it.

Perhaps in the future some kind of formation command will help your units spread out.

This is a poor strategy that would only beat very weak players who are overwhelmed by your stream.

no I steal from a site, where there a FA tutorial in Portuguese, I just add the words "Stream" and "Formation".

DPS is not the point. The point is:
* It puts the enemy on constant defense (catapults are actually terrible for stopping a stream. I have seen people build banks of 20 catapults and the result is 1 Dox getting hit by 10 missiles.)
* There is no quick way to stop the attack (unlike blobs)
* AE weapons such as pelters, Holkins and T2 bombers become very inefficient and not cost effective
* It is ultimately a war of attrition where YOU, the streamer, will be gaining more metal and more energy while the enemy deals with your stream.

Basically, next time T2 bomber spam has you down, try this. A good early starter stream should be considered to be 6-8 T1 factories and 3-4 T2 factories. A good late game stream is "however much puts your metal production back into the yellow". Keep making more.

I have yet to see a bomber/turtler be able to handle it.

Incidentally, one reason I switched to vehicles for the stream is that it makes it easier for me to also build bots for occasional blob attacks or reactive defense. I can quickly grab a bunch of units, right-click out any vehicles that were in the picture and there's my bot blob to do whatever with, leaving the vehicle stream running.

Sometimes I beat people purely because they decided to do a blob attack on me and they were forced to take their eyes off of their base to do this. I micromanage my defense, they micromanage their blob and my stream runs over their base in the meantime.

what I mean is: throw a Stream into you enemy and tell to him use their units in Formation, will be like water against a Stone wall... you will lose more than you enemy, actually he will almost not lose units...

* just make some towers w/ walls
* wait until formations... and/or a enemy w/ air control
*this is right
*NO, the Streamer will probably start throwing 1 tank on 5 tanks(for example), so he winning in the number of units, and then he will have more map control, Metal control...

If my enemy started streaming I'd just build a few laser turrets and then go work on something else.

Turrets kill units faster than factories build them. The only way to get past good defenses is overwhelming numbers attacking at once (as opposed to in a line)

But I agree, formation commands would be nice, even if they are just "Disperse" and "Cluster"

Doesn't work. Shellers outrange all laser turrets and the stream will overwhelm Pelters and Holkins, which fire too slowly and can't do enough damage per hit to a spread out stream of units. Plus, the stream is distracting any artillery you have from dealing with the artillery the streamer is putting down inside the stream. You'll have to have Holkins on your front line and be careful to micro them so they are hitting my construction units and not my stream.

Formations won't make any difference. You are still going to get hit. It may reduce the damage that Shellers do to you, though.

Any the time you are spending getting formations together and replaced is time the streamer is out there doing other things, like taking other planets, building more income, building more factories, etc.

The real beauty of it is how good it is for virtually 0 APM investment.

All of these counters you guys are discussing require multitudes more APM to execute and maintain.

A single catapult.
Radar.
A couple towers, a couple gil-es, and a couple pelters.

Catapults know to target buildings inherently, and will do so for me. This will stop you from ever getting radar.

Since I will have radar on you, my gil-es will hit first, and take out your shellers before they can take them out. Unless you are pumping them out very, very fast, I will outpace you and take no losses.

Won't work.

Catapults have less range than radar and Holkins. This is why I pretty much never build offensive catapults (unless it was a small planet battle and we started off in catapult range). The counter is just "a Holkins, a little further away". Well that and Catapults get overrun by unit streams.

Gil-Es have the same problem as Pelters, which is that they end up spending their shots doing massive overkill to the T1 stream and either get overrun by them or wiped out as Shellers get into range and blow them up while they're distracted.

Basically you're theorycrafting what would happen but I've already tried it against some pretty dedicated turtles and T2 bomb-whores and it smokes them.

ITT: OP suggests way to play the game differently then most and how its worked against T2 bombers.

Posters craft theories to how it won't work when encountered. Having never played against it.

It's almost like a discussion is happening. Goodness!

walls go up pretty darn quick and can make a laser turret extremely unplesent to kill and even more so when backed up by more laser turrets and walls once the first units hit you should be throwing up defences

what we need is T2 tank or bot and ship based Anti Air .. doesnt have to be as effective as t2 jets but would be nice if ground / Sea based forces could put up a good fight and at least force your enemy to not build only bombers to destory everything..

Edit :
umm ship based anti air gattling gun.. that would fun to watch...