Scallop Drop

There's many different counters:

1) Scout.
2) Scout.
3) Plop air and kill transporters.
4) Rush LLT(s).
5) Scout.

emp spider op

semi related:
That typo in the transporter speed still is unnoticed.

quote: That typo in the transporter speed still is unnoticed. I it is kinda fast.

1:00 - scallops are airborne
1:05 - wesleyHE moves out
1:19 - scallops arrive at Lynx's base

The fastest I could get a puppy from Lynx's spawning position to wesleyHE's gs fac was almost precisely 1:00, incidentally just as the scallops go airborne. Once they begin moving out (at 1:05, because wesleyHE actually waits around for a few seconds, meaning this rush can come even faster), they arrive just 14 seconds later.

So if we assume perfect play* from Lynx and wesleyHE, he scouts the drop at 1:00, exactly as they go airborne, and has 14s to react. If you're a super-human machine and instantly slap down LLTs at high prio, you can build roughly (8m/s * 14s) / 90m = 1.24 of them before touchdown with Lynx's 8m/s income, or 1.55 if we say he mex rushed and has 10m/s, or alternatively 1 LLT and a 50m com morph. In practice, he was limited by having just 6e/s. Two scallops can kill an LLT in just over under a second(!), and with the line splash they could be hitting both LLTs, or LLT+fac, or LLT+com.

Furthermore, amph and HT scouts both arrive at almost exactly 1:12 from Lynx to wesleyHE. In those cases, the drop can arrive two seconds after your scout hits their base.

Surely I can't be the only one who sees an issue with this?

*Taking perfect play to its limit, wesleyHE and Cicero77 would likely start in the geo crater. This would lead to an even later scout, or none at all.

quote: the drop can arrive two seconds after your scout hits their base

The first replay and your analysis make the issue seem major. Note though that there is quite a bit of suboptimal play from all sides in both replays.

Perhaps more games using this technique would shed more light on it. True OPness would have you reach the top of the teams ladder with consistent usage (provided that you have a cooperative 2v2 partner) so that would be easy to show.

Obviously a scallop/wubrior drop is not unheard of; people have known it for ages so some counter has to exist.

What is more worrying (and somewhat harder to show) is pre-game RPS in factory choice which seems to be the case here (regardless of OPness). Tank comes to mind as the countered fac, with its slow scout and lack of units to deal with the Scallops (Koda/Panther die, everything else won't be available on time). Meanwhile some factories should be able to deal with it without many problems, e.g. Cloaky is probably able to handle this because Glaive is a decent scout and you can plant a Tick to counter the landed Scallops. Planes should also have an easy time.

Stats on starting fac win rate would be useful but we still don't have that.

Does my post look like I don't mind? Perhaps the BRUTAL pic was not the best idea but the whole paragraph about pre-game RPS was meant to sound concerned.

The major balancers (most importantly GoogleFrog) have not spoken out in this thread so far. Also, the 2v2 tourney is coming soon: I'm pretty sure we're going to see a bunch of scallop/warrior drops there and thus it would be best to wait and see how the pros play that out before making any rash changes.

Sounds like pre-game RPS:

Starting together beats rushes, and rushes beat opposite corners start.
But opposite corner start beats starting together (much better expansion).

Depends on the map I guess. If the map has a second mex triangle then by starting separately you instantly have them capped, for example.

http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/333763