Vikings vs. Zerg help

Ok, I played a game last night and kinda got ticked. I need help understanding what went wrong. I was terran, enemy was zerg, it was 2vs2 but the other players are irrelevant to this question. It was late game, pretty much everyone was bunkered, maybe 3 expansions so resources where flowing in good. I was teching up air, so I had 2 upgrades in armor and 3 in weapons on my vikings and banshees. I went to atttack a small group of mutalisk and hydrolisks, I think he outnumbered me, but not by much. He had 1 upgrade in armor, 0 in weapons. I was expecting an easy win, but got destroyed. Not only that but he hammered everything I had, that crippled me and I was out of resources and needless to say they overran us. Im goin to watch the replay later on when I have time to see if there was an unknow factor, but I think in total that was total BS. I have fought zerg before and my air force, usually 2 in weapon upgrade and 1 in armor destroys zerg with 0 upgrades. I was just hoping for some opinions and insight to see in what ways upgrades effect the players and how to avoid getting destroyed again. Thanks

 

Vikings are not going to do well against certain units in zerg, such as hydras or banelings. You have to keep your forces balanced or you will get destroyed.

It sounds like he must have just countered your strategy and out gathered you for resources. Not much you can do about this. I just recommend getting more in depth with your attacks next time and building an army of vikings/thors or vikings/battlecruisers to handle varying degrees of attacks from different units.

 

Hydralisks are among the best anti-air units in the game due to their high base damage and fast attack rate (slightly faster than an unstimmed Marine), and so will generally tear apart any air units you send to deal with them (not to mention the claim that you were outnumbered which makes matters even worse).

The ideal counter for Hydralisks and Mutalisks are Siege Tanks and Thors, respectively. Cloaked Banshess would've also done a decent job against the Hydralisks, provided you had destroyed any of your opponents detectors before attacking. Also note that armor/weapon upgrades don't really mean much when your units are unable to target their attackers (in this case Banshees vs Mutalisks, and Air Mode Vikings vs Hydralisks).

 

1. hydra pwn banshee
2. hydra pwn viking

emm.... i guess he did deserve to win.

 

i have to admit mass hydras can basically destroy anything of lower tech and air units. they seriously rip through air and can destroy thors if they have huge numbers as well. their fire rate is as fast as a stimed marine and it does 15 damage at missle attack level 3. i kind of think they need a slight nerf because as long as the zerg expand to like 3 bases and use queens to hatch larvae constantly, you can get so many hydras it will almost be impossible to stop. if you add like 15 roaches it really will be impossible to stop. i guess all you can do is put early pressure.

 

Would posting an ASCII facepalm be considered spam?

As pretty laid out above, you got beat because you tried to attack a larger force made up of one kind of unit that directly counters both of yours, and another kind of unit that counters one of yours. Upgrades are important but they aren't going to swing a situation that against you into victory.

As for your prior battles, I can only assume the zerg force you tore apart or yours was of a different composition then this, or the numbers were in your favor, or the engagement itself differed (e.g. the zerg units streamlined into your units which were together), or you're just remembering or relating it incorrectly.