I realize some of my answers are a little long, so I made a TL;DR version
I'm going to ask you a few rhetorical questions and I don't want you to be offended, but they are things you need to be thinking about.
- What was your plan going in to this game?
- When did you plan your timing push?
- Why did you build 3 Barracks?
- What did you think when you scanned a Factory with a tech lab and a Starport building?
In my opinion these were the three major mistakes you made. By 7:30 it had become your opponents game to lose before a single shot was fired.
Looking at your BO I saw:
- 3 Rax (1 tech 1 reactor)
- 1 Factory, all before the 7 minute mark.
If you can cut the produce of the factory, and done an MM timing push at 6:30 (which is the usualy MM timing push) you would have easily won the game. At that time your opponent had 5 marines and 1 tank (no siege mode). The normal MM push there is 4-5 of each Marauders and Marines. You would have steam rolled him.
If you had done so your answers would have been:
3 Rax timing push, heavy on Marauders at 6:30
Instead, you chose to go 4 unit producing structures off 1 based (which you can't really afford as Terran). This meant that your Barracks sat idle, you didn't produce Marauders and you didn't have a good timing push. Its because of this I asked my first 3 questions.
You don't really seem to have a plan.
Strangely this wasn't what lost you the game. Not having a plan, while hard to over come, is not crucial, especially since your opponent didn't really have one either (there is no good reason he builds that second Barracks). The problem became your response to what your opponent was doing.
At 6:30 you saw a Factory with a tech lab, two Barracks and a Starport being built. The second Barracks is really the red herring here, so let's ignore it for 5 seconds. What does: 1 Barracks, 1 Factory, 1 Starport mean? In TvT this means Marine/Siege/Viking.
In response you throw down an Engineer Bay (for Turrets, which you build) and a Starport for Vikings, and continue to build Marines (and a single Marauder). Which of these things is supposed to counter Siege tanks using Vikings for sight? Well Viking vs Viking is key, but what about the Siege tanks?
By 11 Minutes you'll have built 2 Vikings and 3 Marauders with another one of each on the way. Ultimately there is nothing you can do about the Siege Tanks and they roll your Marine heavy force. They box you in and that's game.
In theory you probably could have done something clever with Dropships around 9-10 Minutes and caught him with his pants down, but really you don't do anything to stop him.
Before you play your next game (before you even load up Starcraft) I want you to have an answer to the first three questions I asked. And next time you scan Factory/Starport I want you to think "Great! My timing push should arrive right before he gets Siege Tanks!"
A plan is like a story, it has a beginning, a middle and an end. Turtling and finding the right moment to attack isn't a story, its like a blurb you'd find on the cover. Let me tell you the story of Bio into Biomech:
I'm going to open up three Barracks into Marine/Marauder. Marauders will work well as a meat shield and the Marines will provide the real fire power. I'll push just before stim finishes so that I arrive with it. The goal of my push is to stop early expansions and punish heavy teching strategies. I know that I can support 3 Barracks on 1 base and still have a little extra income to plan for expanding.
Mid-game I'm going to transition into MMM and Medivac drops. This will keep my opponent contained and force him to build a lot of defenses he won't be able to use to attack me. Additionally, Medivacs will let me really take advantage of Stim and keep me mobile. I know I can support Medivacs on top of my three Barracks, but nothing else, so I will make sure to have a Command Center up first. My goal is to gain map control and keep my opponent boxed in.
Late game I'm going to start adding in factory units like Siege Tanks or (more recently) Thors to break my opponent's defenses. I should be comfortably on 2 or 3 bases by now so resources won't be an issue. I will crack my opponent like an egg
My strongest weapon is my mobility and I will abuse it. I can end the game at any point: early, middle or late. I will restrain myself from over committing and starve my opponent to death. I will end the game when I choose. I am Terran BioMech.
It sounds scary doesn't it?
Let's do some math here:
- Average Rush Distance: 50 seconds
- Drone Build Time: 17 Seconds
- Minerals gathered per second: 1*Drones
- Starting Drones: 6 (+50 Min)
So if he rushing you with his initial 6 this means you should have enough to build at least 2 more drones by the time he arrives. This would leave you with 8 drones to his 6. If he waits for his 7th, then you should be looking at 9-10 Drones vs his 7.
The key point here is: You should always have more Drones!
Now in 2v2 I can see how this would be an issue... if your ally doesn't help you, but in 1v1 you should always have a leg up on anyone Drone rushing.
Now many where you're falling down is Drone Micro. The key to good Drone micro is two things
- Try to surround his Drones
- If you right-click on Minerals (harvest), your Drones gain unit walking
If you're ever in a situation where he has a surround and you don't, just click minerals. This will remove his surround. Don't let your Drones get caught behind each other as you want to get a good surround. Finally, if he's dancing in and out, just mine more minerals and build more Drones. He's not harvesting and you are, and that means you can gain an even larger advantage.
Best Answer
The key here is not to follow builds, there are some builds which you can do almost no matter what your opponent does, but these are usually cheesy or all in.
The better thing to do would be to have a general idea of what you want to do, but only do so if it is safe or appropriate to do so.
The way you tell if it is safe is to scout. Look at what they're doing and eliminate what they can't be doing.
For instance if you scout they've invested into technology or economy then you know that they can't have any decent amount of army with which to attack you with. So you know that it'll be a good time for you to attack if you're set up to do so, or you could expand yourself.
If you notice that they have little in the way of tech and you notice a lot of production buildings, then they are probably gearing up for an attack so investing more into your army and technology will be better suited.
So you continue along your general plan, being safe until you scout something that makes you decide to adjust your plan to what they're doing. It can even be more specific, like you notice lots of zerglings and banelings so you get more sentries to forcefield, or you see they're getting a spire so you might wanna tech to thors and mix in more marines.
A safe general plan is to have three production buildings and one advancement in tech then expand. So for Terran it would be something like three raxes (the techlab is your piece of tech) then expand then 2 raxes and a factory (the factory and techlab on it is your tech) then expand, etc.
It's better to follow a plan instead of a build for various reasons, namely it teaches you to adapt plans instead of blindly doing the same thing and the other main point which I made in the comments is that new players CANNOT follow builds, because their macro is simply not good enough. You can't hit the timings if you have gaps in worker/unit production, if you're getting supply blocked or if you're floating a lot of resources.
Just following a plan allows you to focus more on your macro and you'll learn much faster. You'll discover on your own all these builds that people use. The builds come about because people followed the basic macro rules and discovered the best way to do things.
A quick example of this is the 9 pylon. If you build your pylon before that at 8 supply you will have to have a gap in probe production which is not good. If you do it at 10 supply you will get supply blocked (gap in probe production in this case). So that's why all (most) builds will say 9 pylon.
So to sum up; if you macro well, you'll just accidentally do 'correct' builds. Then the trick is to adapt your build to what your opponent is doing. The better you know what they're doing, the better you can adapt and therefore defeat them