Terran - Planetary Fortress

[Aldrius]

24 Banelings means 1920 damage. Even if only 20 made it to the PF, that's still ~1600. Was something repairing it?

Hm, not actually sure how many it was specifically. And yeah, he had SCVs repairing it, and then he'd expoed while I was dealing with it. Shouldn't have let him do that.

Also, you should have gone for burrowed Roaches. Just burrow the one(s) that get hit and the rest get free shots. And with no scans (Turrets of course should be your first target)...

Ah, I don't think my micro is that good. Really, all I had to do was keep a better eye out for his expansion and expand a lot myself. He was contained pretty well, and wasting resources repairing that thing.

[Gifted]

So I've found lately there are a few players who start with a PF at their main. And then sort of build a very unconventional wall around it. It's very, very annoying, and as a zerg player there's not much that can actually push in and kill the damn thing at tier 1/2 (Well, mutas/corruptors but I pretty much had already gone everything BUT spire tech, so I didn't really have the money). I pushed in with like 24 banelings and then followed up with about 18 Hydralisks. The PF won.

I'm sure there were other things I could have done. Expanded a lot to get the money for spire tech, done a better contain. But I wasted a crapton of my army trying to bring that thing down and then lost the game...

I know this, in fact, I've used it for my nuke rush build. It allows you to not worry about much as I've seen it personally take down at least 20 roaches on it's own with some solid scv micro. (Turn on autorepair, select planetary fortress, alternate O and D when you need to protect the SCVs)

It's rather efficient.

[Norfindel]

Idle workers?? Never! Need to crack that whip and get them on resources.

Who said they need to be idle? If the enemy cannot approach the PF, you can pretty much mine from there!

[Rabiator]

Who said they need to be idle? If the enemy cannot approach the PF, you can pretty much mine from there!

Sometimes people expand pretty late or dont start with their natural expo. It should be pretty insulting to use a PF in your enemies natural and you could mine there too.

Obviously the fortress alone would never work, but as the centerpiece of a bunch of fortifications; at least one AA tower should be there to give air defense and detect DTs or burrowing roaches, maybe a bunker for M&Ms and one or two sieged tanks. The whole point is to make a dangerous area for your enemy or to force that tech switch. It would also give a nice fallback position where your repair SCVs are waiting for your mechanical units after they assaulted the enemy and didnt succeed.

It is also one of the tactics where the improved armor for buildings might help a lot. Sadly there is only one level of "building armor" and this cant compete with the offensive upgrades of the units. So that makes it somewhat worthless.

A question I have though: Can the PF still load SCVs (for sefekeeping and to lure the enemy into thinking there was no repair crews around)? The description of the Neosteel Frame upgrade mentioned in their entry for the PF at
http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Planetary_fortress
seems to indicate it.

Lastly this is a "bunker technique" and that is the specialty of Terrans. Even though its immobile and cant be salvaged it still provides food and gives a tougher defense than a bunker with Marauders. So it is a viable thing for your base defense as well which doesnt cost population. Think of it as an "oversized ground attack turret" and you know what I mean. Tanks and bunkers and so on are pretty easily sniped by a good opponent, but the PF needs a large force to crack it. The time and effort spent by the enemy might even be worth it in the end.
20 banelings = 500 minerals for the zerglings + 500/500 for the baneling mutation is more than the 500/100 for the PF. Even without repairing it and the fortress getting destroyed you just had to sacrifice the materials and one SCV to build it, while all your factories and barracks can continue pumping out troops.

[Gifted]

First, Rabiator, I don't mean any disrespect with your opinions but it's important to clarify the importance and power of the upgrades that you mentioned "could suck".

1. The building armor upgrade is SUBSTANCIAL against earlier teirs and makes a difference later. What you don't realize is that with 1 level of upgrades, you get +2 armor (which is the equivelent of 2 armor upgrades for other units) it comes out significantly faster and costs overall less. This changes all buildings up to 3, except for the PF which starts with 3, upping it up to 5.

2. The second upgrade you mention is situational, if you have about 10 scvs at it, it works great to protect them (as it doubles their bunkerability for them, upgrading slots from 5 to 10.) As I mentioned in my above comment, this is how you keep your scvs alive when microing. Put all 10 on autorepair.. use O to load them if they get under fire, resetting the attack to the fortress and IMMEDIATELY hit D to unload them. They pop out and immediately auto-repair the fortress. They simply don't have a benefit to target the SCVs, and if you have the armor upgrade, it creates quite a connundrum for them.

[unentschieden]

There are quite a lot situations where the enemy CAN´T allow you to take a expansion, especially a High-Yield one. PF´s are ideal there, especially with all the according upgrades. Remember that you will need Turrets which fortunately benefit from the same upgrades. Bunkers as well if you need them too.

[TunaFish]

I have a feeling aggressive use of the PF is going to be the go-to noob-bashing strategy.

[n00bonicPlague]

So you can still load SCVs into a PF — in fact, you can load the normal 5 plus 5 more?

Awesome. What about the OC? Does it still lose its ability to load SCVs?

[Nicol Bolas]

you can load the normal 5 plus 5 more?

You only get the extra 5 with Neosteel Frames.

[XSOLDIER]

So I've found lately there are a few players who start with a PF at their main. And then sort of build a very unconventional wall around it. It's very, very annoying, and as a zerg player there's not much that can actually push in and kill the damn thing at tier 1/2 (Well, mutas/corruptors but I pretty much had already gone everything BUT spire tech, so I didn't really have the money). I pushed in with like 24 banelings and then followed up with about 18 Hydralisks. The PF won.

I'm sure there were other things I could have done. Expanded a lot to get the money for spire tech, done a better contain. But I wasted a crapton of my army trying to bring that thing down and then lost the game...

I'm not 100% on this (as I don't have a key myself), but couldn't you use a Corruptor's Corruption ability to prevent the PF from shooting at your ground forces? I don't know a lot about the ability, but as I understand it should shut down the building, and let your ground forces get through without taking casualties from it's guns. (has anybody tested this?)


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