Terran Strategies

See Mineral, Gas, & Energy Production and Usage Statistics to plan your economy.

There are several viable Terran strategies, and you may have to adapt your own depending on how your enemies and allies play.

The most important thing to keep in mind in Zerg Hex is:

* A zerg starts with a low economy, it takes time to build it up but it grows exponentially. The more aggressive the zerg is early the longer its eco will stay low.
* A zerg economy will always be greater than the one from a terran: do not try to beat a zerg at this game.
* Unlike terrans, zerg can share resources. In other words they have easier time to combine their income unlike terrans
* The key is cooperation: ***a zerg cannot focus 3 terran players at a time***. As a result, at least one and eventually two terrans should be free enough to expand and/or push. Take advantage of a player being focused to be aggressive and damage the zerg.

The best advise we can give to terrans: do not try to beat zerg in economy and do not wait elites to push.

## Openers & Early Game

**1)**An aggressive opener is perhaps the strongest overall opener for terrans.

Depends on how focused you are and how good the zerg is. If the zerg upgrades its spawners, you will need your reaper on the front to help your marines. If not, you can send it to destroy the rocks at your base to unlock the pocket base.

Sheep farms produce 9.33 minerals per minute for 40 gas, 5 minerals (including sheep) while fruit farms produce 10 minerals per minute for 30 gas. So building fruit farms is more cost-efficient but less space-efficient and holding a large space early can be hard. If you're being focused don't build more than 4 total fruit farms (including the one in your base) before switching to at least some sheep.

**If you are not focused:**

1. Send your reapers to take down the rocks: once they are taken they can help to take the 3rd gas (if you don't already have it, which you SHOULD if you're not being focused) at the front and then free the two gases owned by the zerg at each side of your base. Refineries take 1 minute to pay for themselves so if the zerg player isn't terribly competent try to grab as many refineries as possible.
2. Build one line of Walls to prevent the zerg to attack from all sides
3. Build an Armory forward, use the range buff to kill spine protecting zerg spawners, and research Shattering Laser as soon as possible (~8min)
4. Have 1 or 2 more batteries to distribute the energy (one for each 5 generator levels)

If your Armory is forward enough, it should provide enough bonus range for your marines to take down the first Spine without entering its range.

You may want to have 3 Shock Troopers to take help to take down the spines and spawners (3 Instant Discharge + 2 regular shots are enough to take down a spine).

Now you should be relatively safe thanks to Shattering Laser as long as you are keeping a healthy marine count and production. The next steps are:

* Taking down the zerg Nests and Mineral Extractors as fast as possible
* Get Conservation L1 for your marines

Doing so will reduce the map control of the zerg as well as their economy. The Nest also provides a Buggo giving you extra gas income. A Good benchmark is (unless focused) being able to take down the mineral extractors before or at the 14 minute mark which should be around the beginning of the middle game.

**Focused spin:**

Ultimately the objective is the same. The difference is, if you are focused you will have harder time to achieve it. When you are focused, what is important to keep in mind is:

* Make sure you stay out long enough for your Refineries to pay off (1 minute)
* Do not build sheep farms. Sheep farms are about half as cost effective as fruit farms. While they have the added benefit of fitting inside your base, if you are pushed back up the ramp, the top priority is to get shattering laser and push down instead of farming, and you'll need all the gas you have.
* Put the Armory either behind the lake or if the risk of being overwhelmed is too much inside your base
* *Do not lose any units*: do not hesitate to retreat if necessary

When you are too focused and cannot manage to get out and the zerg keeps coming at you as soon as you try to go out instead of focusing another of your ally, you have only one role: stay alive. Get your economy up and running, keep a healthy amount of marines and prepare yourself to push out and establish the lowground if the attention of the zerg switches, or push out if the zerg f2'd to defend someone else's push.

What is important here is to keep the zerg busy: if the zerg is focusing you it means your allies are having easier time and can punish him. Eventually they will be able to help you while having damaged the zerg enough. The biggest damage you can do to zerg while being focused is forcing him to keep the focus on yourself.

*Pros*:Keeps zergs busy,hence slowing their eco(Slows down the process of zergs getting brutas),has the added benefit of giving experinced terrans a better chance at winning by opening more options to punish and counter the zerg then just spamming ions and Stasis Cannons,and also gives a reason for terrans to not leave the game early as there is an actual chance of winning.

*Cons*:You will get focused if you have the most gas(Least if the zerg is bad or new),but hey that is part of this strategy.

Both of the pros and cons apply to the Anti-cheese as well as both of the openers have the same overall strategy.

**2) Anti-cheese -** This is a twist on the econ opener, except you simply get a Shock Trooper after your 4th unit instead of a reaper. Use this strategy when you are not sure the Zerg isn't going to do some sort of cheese (Massing units, Firelings, Spines, Drone rush, etc..).

**3) Kill your teammates and commit suicide opener** - Do not expand or expand and take only 1 gas and put down Walls in order to defend your base. This strategy is called that way because what you are doing is:

* Playing the sheep: the zerg will take you as a noob/harmless and focus on your teammates instead.

* Greatly limiting your economy which means negligible support to your teammates or no way to punish the zerg when he is focusing your teammates.

* Pisses off your teammates and causes them to quit,thus also killing yourself in the long run with no way for your side to do anything at all.(0 gas)

* Can cascade into a total loss of the game,hence killing all your teammates and making the game unwinnable.(0 gas)

*Pros*:You won't get focused,but...

*Cons*:The last 3 points mentioned above.

Personal Notes:Why would you do this opener? While one gas is still tolerable to a certain degree(for most people) as it can still help get you early firebats,a 0 gas opener is just outright feeding the zerg with 2 mineral spires and 4 spawners that can be used against other terrans,and makes it a fuck ton easier for them to get brutas as they get to deal with 2 terrans with the starting income meant for 3 terrans.This makes the game more favored to the zerg,can ruin both the fun for terrans and the zerg and will get you softbanned for future games.
If you do this consistently,you should just stop playing this game,go outside,sit up straight and eat your greens.

## Mid Game

(If you or anyone has done opener 3(0 gas variant) you can skip this as it will be non-existent anyway)

When entering the mid game you should have:

* A healthy amount of upgraded marines: 30-40 marines with shattering + conservation L1 or close to have it
* A healthy economy: 2 or 3 saturated fruit farms and 3-4 gases
* Taken down the zerg first base(Which almost never happens)

From that point, what is left to do is:

* Help to take down the first zerg bases of your teammates if they are not already taken down (the objective being to destroy the Mineral Extractors to slow down the zerg economy)
* Putting a Tech Lab next to your generator: it will be necessary to provides the shield ability, either to help you to get out of a nasty situation, support in energy or take down the Large Spines
* Get the Generator at the level 15 in order to have enough energy to both sustain your army and save enough for providing energy to your Tech Lab
* Continue to produce marines until having 50-80 marines
* Get Penetrating Laser

The main objective is to take down the Large Spines in order to reduce the zerg map control and clear the path to the Hives.

If you manage to clear the large spines on each side before the 20 minutes mark, you have already won in all but the scenario in which the zerg has ultras/brutas on the way. The zerg economy will be quite limited and you should have a quite powerful force.

## End Game

The end game is probably the sketchiest part of the strategy as it depends greatly as how the game went. Clearing the zerg base is likely to have drained you: not much energy and the production should start to be very limited. The biggest risk in this situation is the zerg to manage to get Ultralisk or Brutalisk tech for which you will have trouble. But don't panic, there are several solutions:

* You should have a force strong enough to deal with a small number of Ultralisks or Brutalisks. They will not have speed or damage upgrades so even though they will manage to kill a few marines, it should be enough to stay alive. If they have been massed together, a Force Field on them will nullify their armor making them easy targets.
* Zerg has very little resources: he will not be able to focus all the players allow them to push and very little map control

The best way to go in this situation is just to manage to regroup yourself as terrans and do one final big push. If you are too limited in energy, you can try to just snipe the large spines and the ultralisks/brutalisks spawners: they are expensive and take time to complete so that can give you enough breathing room to power up enough to finish the zerg.

## Defensive Techniques/Strategies

### 1-The Suicide Camp

This strategy is one of the noob strategies which requires a massive amount of vespene to accomplish, something that you won't get if you're backed up the ramp. This strategy is about utilizing every repair and health upgrade for your front gates, as well as using a large amount of Italis or Tanks. The idea is that you want to get as much vespene as much as possible and mass a huge amount of farms and converters. You want all the minerals you get to be converted into vespene and then upgrade your wall/gates enough to survive a Omegalisk (Not Possible). After you get your maxed Wall upgrades, you want to just sit behind your wall, putting a Tech Lab at the back with a Construction Yard. You'll stack a massive amount of builders on the Walls to repair and a Shock Trooper or two to debuff all incoming enemies. Snipe Nests with Tanks.

Unless the zerg is a total noob, you will not have enough gas to accomplish anything meaningful before the zerg destroys you, as not having access to the lowground gas cripples your economy.

See Turtling for details .... seriously though, use this as a last resort only (unless you're a troll) (don't be a troll).

### 2-Anti-Strikeling

(outdated as Strikeling spawners are capped at 30 pieces)

Some Zerg now mass 30 Strikeling Spawners around midgame. The main reason why is because Strikelings have the best burst damage on the Hex for cheap, making it very dangerous to target fire Large Spines, and they costs the least supply so it's a cheap way to increase income. The best way to take out a large mass of Strikelings are shatter laser marines and/or shock troopers. When dealing with mass Strikelings, since they have 1 hp, t1 marines are more than enough.

Still valid: When you have just upgraded to Elite Marines, add some Shock Troopers or Standard Marines to the ball. A strikeling mass can kill Elite Marines in low numbers, simply because they don't shoot enough.

### 3-The Hole

The hole is easy to do and cheap. What you need to do is make a 1x2 hole in your wall (2x2 for bigger zergs). You should try to make your walls be two walls thick if you are to rely on it. All the Zerg will funnel through that hole upon seeing an enemy attacking them. Keep in mind, as long as you have a way to your soldiers, the Zerg Units will not attack the walls unless told to. You can also put an SCV in the hole on hold position to block Zerg units from getting through. They will not target the SCV if they are both being shot at and not explicitly ordered to. Great for defending against roaches with t1 marines.

1. This make the zerg concentrated on one path, so you don't have to split your forces to maybe overdefend one side and underdefend the other. Shock troopers' splash would also become actually useful construction yard at the top of your ramp and research unified armor.
2. Build a tech lab and charge it up. Make sure you get as many generator upgrades as possible.
3. Simply support your allies with power fields and energy warps when needed.
4. If it gets late enough in the game and you are still alive then refer to the turtling strategies and you can potentially ion.(Doesn't work if you are the only one standing since it takes 9 ions to take out the hives)

Option 2:

1. Rush chemical plant by building sheep farms and two converters.
2. Use chem plant to get more econ and get a second chem plant.
3. Keep up with fortification upgrades so you don't die.
4. Once you have 4-6 chem plants, build roughly 80 firebats.
5. A-move to hive and win. Be sure to micro firebats near spawners and large spines by moving them forward then letting them attack.

Option 2 works best if you can sneak an SCV out and get cow farms on the side raised areas, and the zerg take a while to get omega. If the Zerg rush omega and you're the last one standing, gg.

4-CRuiserTHor

This is a rush strategy. Make 1 scv to harvest mineral and make 6 for going 2 assimilators. In this time, make some supply depots.Wait for a short time. Make planetary fortress for defensive combat.

Make 4-5 battlecruisers and 2-3 thors in short time. Research yamato cannon upgrade. Activate thors' punisher cannon ability. You are ready for attacking. Go to the enemy base and (If the opponent protoss, first kill the pylons) destroy workers. soldiers will be insufficient. Don't forget use yamato cannons. And you should win