Assuming that I scout well and find out that my opponent is going for mass marines early on (no gas, reactors), I still seem completely unable to counter marines when they come at me too early. My sentries die immediately, so Guardian Shield isn't up for really long. It's impossible to forcefield the ramp because it's too huge. I usually have not enough stalkers to hold.
I surely do something wrong, but I hope this not micro (I'm terrible at it).
(I hope this is not a duplicate, but I found no reply other than:
- FF your ramp: I'm talking about huge ramps like Scrap Station's
- Collossi : I'm talking about a marine rush, I'd have no way to rush this much to collosus.
- Guardian shield + stalkers is a good answer, but how do I keep my sentries alive? With zealots => less stalkers...
)
EDIT: some good looking answers were provided, but some of them collide. I'll have to try several of them but have not too much time to do so currently. My list looks like this:
- choking the base entrance
- more units from 2 or 3 gateways + cannons (not sure about the order...)
- more sentry-focused army and using FF to create chokes
EDIT: TESTS RESULTS
Ok, I had some time to make some tests this week-end, although not real in-game tests. I just used the UnitTest map.
- zealots alone are good enough in small numbers against a mineral equivalent number of marines, but only in open spaces (not a ramp).
- should you add a sentry (with guardian shield), your army is allowed to be smaller than your opponent's.
- stalkers need an arc and a guardian shield to be really effective without micro.
Anyhow, the good answer is really to just have stuff to defend, it seems.