My issue with swann’s depots isnt they require too much attention, it’s they cost so much early game. Swann has a billion things you need to upgrade and build. Factory, refineries, gas drones, tech reactor, Goliath/siege tank upgrades, armory, 8 siege tanks, laser drill upgrade, starport, hercules, armory upgrades.
All that before the 6ish minute mark.
Tanks might as well cost 250 minerals because of how often you need to throw down depots when you’re making them. In the early game, that hurts ramp up, and by a significant amount.
Most commanders tech, then pump out units once they have good economies to support them. Swann can’t do that: he needs to start snowballing his army asap, which is really hindered when 1/3 of all the minerals you make before the 4 minute mark need to be supply depots.
Most commanders should not start upgrading attack/armor before 8 minutes, unless you do only one armory. You are more likely to lose units with fewer units than lower upgrades, getting a decisive number of units asap is usually far better.
Tech however is high priority compared to upgrade level, because these can prevent your units from receiving enemy fire in the first place.
I haven’t read whole thread in detail and my last game with Swann has been back a while, but i never had any “real” issues as far as i can remember. In my opinion, key to success outside of mutation is the gas drones costs reduction mastery. That’s 720 minerals (540 on DoN) you save on your vespene harvesters early, which will pay of later on x-times back.
Got to headscratch every time, i see a laser drill-swann.
This is a great example of that. He is ignoring all feedback and keeps his opinion of a weak Swann because his ego tells him that at his level he must be a pro Swann.
Just yesterday a had ally over 1k on Mist Opportunity who would not clear areas for bots until those bots move our and start taking damage despite seeing me clearing half the map. I don’t do all the work on purpose so the ally can have fun too.
Sounds like you’re doing it wrong, Swann doesnt need any early army snowballing. He needs an early economy focus. Check out the guides on how to play Swann properly. Or, if you don’t like his style, just a play commander you like.
The thing I love most about Swann is that there seems to be multiple ways to play him. Usually in a match, I might get supply blocked a few times, but never anything that hits me hard or takes any amount of time to fix.
If your having supply issue early game, you might be able to forgo some early units and supply and build some turrets. Flamers are cheap and durable, and the blasters are great for early game pushes with some scv’s. Plus you can refund them right afterwards and put that money straight into your army now. Again, he’s got tons of ways to play, depending if you want to focus more on macro or micro.
That’s possible, I could/should probably add in static defense early on, then save combat drop for a later wave.
I almost always time an attack upgrade to start at 6 minutes. By the time it finishes at 8ish minutes, I have the decisive number of units and power spike into objectives.
Huh lol? That was a response to your “let’s compare timing to see scientifically if Swann needs help or not (Change Depot Mechanism or not).
What does it have anything to do with how people play? Maybe except the fact that your proposed approach to SoA per your suggested comparisons will lose to most adequate Swann player. Therefore, proves how irrelevant this entire conversation is still (especially considering you are still being defensive).
Isn’t this suggesting a way to play? Fearr’s right to point out this is an inefficient way to approach Scythe of Amon. Not to mention it’s a confusing way to talk, as it’s not clear at all what you mean by ‘1st objective’ on a map where you can take them in any order. To some players, the first objective is the northwest one.
Anyway, rather than put in a lot of time optimising speedruns for a particular subset of Scythe of Amon, we could just use the Any% records for the whole map, and in this you’ll be vindicated.
People get het up about the use of the word ‘weak’ to describe commanders. Swann does have a relatively weak early game, relative to other commanders. But that doesn’t mean it’s weak in absolute terms. His early game is strong enough to do what’s needed to be done on Brutal in the ‘designed’ timescales. He can’t race very fast, but it’s okay to have commanders like that. It’s okay to have commanders that some players won’t like.
Aside from it being okay, though, the supply-for-energy mechanism wouldn’t really change that. To turn him into a speedrunner you’d need to do something more drastic, like give him cash for destroying enemy structures.
Actually that wasn’t what I was suggesting. It sounded to me like you were going early army and thus didn’t have a focussed quick expand. Have you tried the build order and timings in Swann guides? It does vary a bit based on the map and enemy comps, but that early economy focus sets you up well to choose a variety of army and/or tower builds.
Yeah, he’s often slower than others, but once he’s had some time to build up an army he hits really hard.
I just checked the last 10 of Hunter’s mutation rankings and Swann comes top-tier for 162,163,164,165,166(vs.ground),167,168. A number of those he’s the best or nearly the best of the top-tier.
For my point of view, the biggest problem of Swann’s supply is that, if you order 5 SCVs to build 5 depots with Shift command, each SCV will build an individual depot by himself, not all SCVs to accelerate a single one. Waiting for the SCVs themselves to clear the construction area also take time.
Click the spot to move ALL of them, THEN “shift build queue up”. The other 4 SCVs will be in proximity, and will wander over to lend a hand, tandem style
Look… i suggested some objectives and first bonus in order to make each run short, while still have some checkpoints for benchmarking.
You could even do 1 shard only and compare with other commanders.
This kind of proves my point, don’t you think? I am pretty sure Swann would also lag behind in early game objective times vs most other commanders… probably more than on whole game time.
That being said, orbital depot drops would help with that a bit too, since it would save Swann couple of hundred minerals per game.
There are plenty of really hard hitting commanders out there. That is in no way something special to Swann, and therefore also not a justification for his slow early game… at least that’s my way of thinking about the matter.
