Starcraft 2

[vega12]

Welcome to the Jungle I found easiest with just a medic marine ball, supplemented with some tanks. At your base you have like 4 tanks and a few turrets and maybe a bunker for defense, then your medic marine ball runs with SCVs while you pick up the gas. Stimmed marines will rape any incoming air and ground units. I'm not sure how you got in a situation where that many scouts and void rays came at the same time though, as I never had that many in brutal. Well, maybe I did but with stimmed marines you take them out as they come so fast that you never see their numbers get that high. Mech is supposed to be strong there, but without lots of SCVs to heal or a bunch of science vessels to heal, they will get shut down quickly. Goliaths aren't as strong against air as they were in SC1 because they shoot waaaay slower.

And yeah right now I'm in platinum cause I went 5-0 in placement. I made it into diamond in each phase of beta so once I finish up the campaign achievements and get to laddering, I won't be surprised if I get placed there again too.

[Arek the Absolute]

Man, I am getting whopped on badly in multiplayer.

Anyone mind helping improve my protoss gameplay? Looks like I am going to get placed in bronze for sure with how I am doing.

The help would be most appreciated.

[Arcana]

I'm a bronze player too.

From what I've read, there are about five general tips in Starcraft.

1) Learn units and learn what counters units. Don't stick with the same strategy if it doesn't work.

2) Scout early and scout often.

3) Spend your money. If you're ending up with over 1000 minerals then build more buildings or do research.

4) Watch your supply. Try not to get supply capped.

5) Use hotkeys. Learn how to manage armies and units with hotkeys, that's what allows you to micro your army while building units at your base.

That is in my head but it still takes time to actually get executing these things.

[vega12]

Learn how to macro well, and you will be able to beat low level players with almost any unit composition. Focus on:

Constant worker production

Keep money low

Don't get supply blocked

Those are the most fundamental things you can learn to do well. Sure, it might not always be ideal to be always building workers for certain timing attacks or other carefully designed builds, but in general it is a good thing to do. Even when your base is over-saturated, you will be able to transfer the extra workers to your next expansion so it will be up and running economically as soon as possible. For Protoss, you have the additional macro mechanic of chrono boost. If you get good at making sure you are using that and keeping Nexus energy low, then that will also help give you an edge. As to what to use it on, Probes is an obvious one, but really optimal usage is far from being known, so as long as you are using it on something you feel is good (Probes, Gateways/Warpgates, critical upgrades), don't fret about that. If you get these 3 things down, you will be surprised how the optimal build orders for a given strategy often just fall out.

For strategy, I recommend for each match up (PvP, PvT, PvZ), you come up with a basic outline of what you want to do and stick to that for now. Pick something that you just want to do or you feel is your style. As you get more familiar with it, you will naturally come up with good build orders and you will learn all the offensive and defensive timings through experience. If you start to see it really not working, only then should you try to see what other strategies can offer. You will be quite surprised at how versatile you can make a single strategy and often you won't need to make any large deviations from it. Furthermore, once you get to know your strategy really well, you will be very familiar with what it is good at dealing with, so you will also know what things give you difficulty and therefore can scout more intelligently. Scouting isn't so awesome if you don't know what to look for (besides seeing cheese). If you just scout and think, "well if I see terran go MMM, I'll get zealot/sentry into templar tech, but if terran goes mech, I'll go blink stalker into phoenix", that can work pretty well, but if you haven't worked out each strategy in depth, you won't be very good at executing either. Also, if you get too focused on the counter game, you might end up spreading your tech too much and as a result have a much weaker army.

In conclusion, get good at macro, and for now focus on one game plan for each match up.

EDIT: Oh yeah, avoid queuing anything up as much as possible. For example, if you have a Probe queued, but are supply blocked and at 50 minerals, cancelling the Probe right now will let you build the Pylon right now instead of waiting around for the extra 50 minerals to come in. I think I would even include this in the above list as a fundamental thing to concentrate on.

[Tensei]

Key is to learn hotkeys/unit groups so you don't have to painstakingly find your command center/nexus/hatchery, click on it, move the mouse to the bottom right and click on the build worker button but instead you can just press "2s" to achieve the same thing.

Having a set build order is a good idea as well. Most build orders you can find online are streamlined in such a fashion that they utilize every available resource to get your units out as fast as possible, and will account for almost every possible situation you could encounter.

[noTuX]

My co worker just gave me a 10-day guest pass, so I'll get on it tonight. I'm sure I'll like it, but I want to try it before I get it and make sure my computer wont fag up on me while playing.

[Schwaltzvald]

Yeah... I think I'll stick to my "borrowed" copy till this shit gets cleared up; if ever.

[EdgeCrusher]

Yeah... I think I'll stick to my "borrowed" copy till this shit gets cleared up; if ever.

So you are upset that blizzard is actually taking down maps that have racist/insulting/advertising stuff?

[Schwaltzvald]

So you are upset that blizzard is actually taking down maps that have racist/insulting/advertising stuff?

Oh the same shit was around back in the old days. Just like back then I left soon as I saw something I didn't like and so should you if a particular map offends you. Can't wait to see specialized servers set up once it's broken into more. The actually good maps would be noted by the community rather than a piss poor popularity system.

Maybe then I'd actually see progress in the map making community.

Edit* I actually wish to expand more on my thoughts here.

Soon as it was announced that LAN play would be dead, it really should have been the first sign something was rotten within Actizzard. The Real Id issue was horribly handled as it should have been introduced as well as followed similar designs to other apps such as raptr, steam, xfire etcetera. Even before that mess the announcement that SC2 would be split into three parts. Heck after checking how much space the data took (about 7GBs in my "copy") I figured okay it would be fair enough if it were not for the console price of $60...

Moving along, with the ridiculous hand-holding from Actizzard on how map makers ought to make their maps as well as having final say on what is allowed when the online experience is suppose to be "unrated". Is this to say if I felt like creating a Wolf-3d themed map or campaign it would not only be put up and quickly be deleted, with no way for me to save all of my efforts and make any changes (which I shouldn't have to do as the online experience ought to be "unrated") to suit their views of a "family friendly" map/ Cmon you know that's their aim...

Fuck it.

I'll just enjoy what I can and wait for the good stuff to either come through, or just move on. Sure as hell not supporting all that garbage; a real shame too for a relatively good game.

Edit2*

I just remembered I had a program to fix Actizzard's annoying missing LAN features, now I think I can make LAN games on SC2

[Arcana]

I'm more concerned at how they're limiting map sizes to 25MB uploads than of their censorship.

The "Because we can" basically is an exchange that went like this:

Player: "Why do you police maps now for Starcraft 2, but not for Starcraft 1?"

Response: "Because we can. Now, we have the resources for it..."

Basically the "because we can" is not a statement of arrogance, but rather one of capacity. They can now afford to ensure their maps are clean and appropriate, whereas before they really couldn't.

I think if enough people complain about the strict limitations on modding, they'll budge on the upload storage space issue and give everyone much more than 25MB to play with.

Yeah... I think I'll stick to my "borrowed" copy till this shit gets cleared up; if ever.

Man, if you're borrowing another friend's account and playing when he's not, just say it. If you pirated the game, just say it.

[Schwaltzvald]

Man, if you're borrowing another friend's account and playing when he's not, just say it. If you pirated the game, just say it.

Does it really matter?

But yeah allowing more than 25MB to mess around with and a better way to actually manage the maps uploaded would be a step in the right direction.

[Arek the Absolute]

Learn how to macro well, and you will be able to beat low level players with almost any unit composition. Focus on:

Constant worker production

Keep money low

Don't get supply blocked

Those are the most fundamental things you can learn to do well. Sure, it might not always be ideal to be always building workers for certain timing attacks or other carefully designed builds, but in general it is a good thing to do. Even when your base is over-saturated, you will be able to transfer the extra workers to your next expansion so it will be up and running economically as soon as possible. For Protoss, you have the additional macro mechanic of chrono boost. If you get good at making sure you are using that and keeping Nexus energy low, then that will also help give you an edge. As to what to use it on, Probes is an obvious one, but really optimal usage is far from being known, so as long as you are using it on something you feel is good (Probes, Gateways/Warpgates, critical upgrades), don't fret about that. If you get these 3 things down, you will be surprised how the optimal build orders for a given strategy often just fall out.

For strategy, I recommend for each match up (PvP, PvT, PvZ), you come up with a basic outline of what you want to do and stick to that for now. Pick something that you just want to do or you feel is your style. As you get more familiar with it, you will naturally come up with good build orders and you will learn all the offensive and defensive timings through experience. If you start to see it really not working, only then should you try to see what other strategies can offer. You will be quite surprised at how versatile you can make a single strategy and often you won't need to make any large deviations from it. Furthermore, once you get to know your strategy really well, you will be very familiar with what it is good at dealing with, so you will also know what things give you difficulty and therefore can scout more intelligently. Scouting isn't so awesome if you don't know what to look for (besides seeing cheese). If you just scout and think, "well if I see terran go MMM, I'll get zealot/sentry into templar tech, but if terran goes mech, I'll go blink stalker into phoenix", that can work pretty well, but if you haven't worked out each strategy in depth, you won't be very good at executing either. Also, if you get too focused on the counter game, you might end up spreading your tech too much and as a result have a much weaker army.

In conclusion, get good at macro, and for now focus on one game plan for each match up.

EDIT: Oh yeah, avoid queuing anything up as much as possible. For example, if you have a Probe queued, but are supply blocked and at 50 minerals, cancelling the Probe right now will let you build the Pylon right now instead of waiting around for the extra 50 minerals to come in. I think I would even include this in the above list as a fundamental thing to concentrate on.

Great stuff. Really helpful!

What are great units for me to start practicing utilizing? Since I am in bronze, I want to slowly learn techniques with basic set ups in addition to what you said above

[friendlyHunter]

Learn how to macro well, and you will be able to beat low level players with almost any unit composition. Focus on:

Constant worker production

Keep money low

Don't get supply blocked

This. Once these are down, a lot of other things will fall into place. I'm no expert by any means, but just from experience, these things are huge.

A few other random things I've noticed:

- When you build an expansion, take both gasses ASAP and remember to man them (it's only 6 workers!). You may not need gas now, but you'll be thankful later when lack of gas doesn't kill your production.

- In longer games, upgrade your no-gas-cost units (Zergling speed, Marine stim and shield, Zealot charge), so if you're ever out of gas (or saving it up for something) and swimming in minerals, you can still make a formidable force of tier-1 units.

- When the game gets late, scout EVERY empty expansion as much as possible so you know when/where the other guy is expanding and you can react accordingly. I like to send a few expendable units or Observers patrolling from base to base, but there are many options for this. A player that can deny your scouting is a VERY tough opponent >.<

What are great units for me to start practicing utilizing? Since I am in bronze, I want to slowly learn techniques with basic set ups in addition to what you said above

Warning: DON'T get the idea that I know what I'm talking about because my post is so long; I just like to type about this stuff ^__^

From what I've seen:

Zerg - You'll want to know when to use Roaches and when to use Zerglings. I really like to build both, attack and defend with Roaches, and then bring speedlings into the fight as soon as that becomes an advantagous move (e.g. it's NOT advantageous to, say, run zerglings into a marine/zealot ball, or a choke blocked with buildings or zealots). Roaches eat Zerglings and can kite (simultaneously attack and run away from) slow Zealots. I once had an opponent quit in rage because my microed roaches were killing his zealots without getting touched =P Zerglings (speedlings!) are great when you can surround a smaller weaker force to prevent them from retreating, or if you need to travel a lot of ground in very little time. I have very limited experience with Banelings, but Hydras are a fantastic support unit and can put the nail in the coffin when they team up with Roaches. A surprise Mutalisk-ball can end games if the enemy doesn't have enough AA (I find it's often best to snipe the AA with mutas first, then start wreaking havok).

Protoss - I like to start with Zealots, then get a couple Sentries, and then I find Zealots and Stalkers and Sentries is good. Sentries' "Guardian Shield" can be very good - I prefer to use it over Force Field, unless I see a really good opportunity to forcefield a retreating force into a dead end (har har). Everything else I get depends on what the enemy's doing, but Observers are nice to have. Basically, get used to the lower-teir Gateway units, because you'll be using them a lot. Know how to counter Collossi, Warp Rays, and Immortals though.

Terran - I'd say Marines, Seige Tanks, Medivacs, Marauders, and Vikings are the bread & butter & meat & potatoes & vikings (respectively) of the Terran army. I suck with Terran (or at least I'm dominated by them a lot more than I dominate AS them), but those units can pretty much kick all the other Terran units' asses. One time my opponent surprised me with mass Battlecruisers, so I built a bunch of Vikings and before the BCs got near my base I was almost 1-shotting them with Vikings. It was then I learned Vikings have a much higher range than BCs and are much faster, so I picked off most of his slow defensless (now retreating) BCs without getting damaged, until he brought in some proper AA.

And a few race-specific tips (I play Random):

Protoss:

- You must construct additional pylons.

- Constant Probe production with lots of chrono boost on the Nexus is huge.

- If ever you find yourself with tons of minerals, a shitton of Warpgates and Pylons can be a VERY good way to spend them. Warpgate spam lets you create huge armies in no time and can win you the game right there.

- I find that building Pylons in different parts of the map for convenient warp-in is... convenient. Just don't build an excessive amount out of your base or you opponent can potentially supply block you

Versus Protoss:

- If you're in an enemy base and you're not sure what to kill, take a glance and see if he has only 1 or 2 pylons powering several important buildings. Taking out the Cybernetics Core can be crippling as well early game.

- If you scout Void Ray cheese, react immediately and with vigor. He's likely putting a lot of economy into those voids, probably a lot more than a few Spore Crawlers, Hydralisks, Missile Turrets, or Stalkers. (or Vikings?)

Zerg:

- Spawn more overlords! The worst thing ever is saving up larva and resources for an army, and then hearing "spawn more overlords" when you try to create it. If you have the minerals, spawn lots of overlords at once if you know you'll have trouble remembering.

- Don't forget to make lots of drones! Especially early in the game, and especially when you get new expansions. Morphing buildings can lower the drone count at your main or wherever, so build drones there too! I find if I have 1 or 2 spare larva at a hatchery, I do better if I just turn those into drones/overlords (unless I need some other units immediately).

- The Queen's "spawn larva" is huge. Get a queen as soon as your spawning pool's up, and get a new queen right away for every new hatchery. If you're turning spawned larva into eggs, I find it's convenient to spawn more larva right then and there.

- Maybe I'm just paranoid, but don't go too long without either a Lair (and Hydra den or Spire) or Evolution Chamber and a couple spore colonies. The last thing you want is Banshees/voids in your base with no AA but queens. Also the sooner you get Hydras out, the sooner you've got a kick-ass compliment to your Roach or Zergling army.

- If you're running low on minerals, don't get Spine Crawlers; you need those drones.

- Know what early units are bad/good against Roaches and Zerglings. I find Roaches are better than Zerglings against Zealots and Marines (and they also destroy Zerglings), but the speed of speedlings can be VERY useful for finishing off a weakened or retreating force, or for running past a broken wall and into the gooey insides of an enemy base.

Versus Zerg:

- If your opponent gets early zerglings into your mineral line, I find fighting back with some workers can be surprisingly effective (especially if you have a non-worker unit or two to help out). Very early zerglings means they probably have a weak economy, I guess.

- If you can tell your opponent is going mass Mutalisks, Thors or Phoenixes (with proper micro and numbers) will destroy them utterly.

Terran:

- Probably my worst race, but... additional supply depots are required.

- I've got nothin'. Terrans are so squishy to me, and I'm bad at using Seige Tanks for defensive purposes. I find if I lose as Terran, it's often because my opponent stops me from getting permanent expansions.

Versus Terran:

- Yeah, I've got nothing here too. Actually, Roaches can be surprisingly good against a small number of seiged seige tanks... but that's all I've got. Don't run things into a large ball of Marines & Marauders + Medivacs unless you know you can win. (Hint: you can't)

[vega12]

Great stuff. Really helpful!

What are great units for me to start practicing utilizing? Since I am in bronze, I want to slowly learn techniques with basic set ups in addition to what you said above

Honestly, for now anything is fine. Take it one step at a time. Just pick units that you like or something and with experience you will get a better sense of what to use. Since you're Protoss, you can just stick with Zealot+Stalker for now. Sentries require good micro and game-sense to use force fields well, but Zealot and Stalker is fairly well balanced starting force and you with Zealot leg upgrades they are pretty strong too. If you feel comfortable with it feel free to go Sentries too. Just be careful because they cost a lot of gas and cut back on the number of Stalkers you can afford. After that, if you have the time/resources, you can try to transition into Robo Bay units (Immortal and/or Colossus) because they don't have any special abilities either, and you can get also Observers for detection.

But feel free to mix it up! If you want to give it a shot, Zealot / Templar is another potentially strong unit composition for the mid-game, as is Stalker / Phoenix. More micro intensive and dependent on careful timings, but at the Bronze level you can have fun with that too. If you are feeling cheesy (not recommended ) you can go Void Ray.

EDIT: Whatever you do choose to go, make sure you don't spread your tech too thin. That's my only advice. For the midgame, try to focus on just one of the 3 tech branches (Stargate, Citadel, Robo Bay). You might want to go Robo for one observer, but that's a huge investment for just one observer (300 gas I believe?), so if you can avoid going without detection it is recommended for the early mid-game.

[Arek the Absolute]

You guys are awesome.

Much love.

Off to start practicing!

[Nick Hyral]

So.. finally got my account fixed.. I'm Twiztedhyral on Battlenet... Doing story.. did a multiplayer much and didn't fair so well.. Still a fun game, the story is pretty nice so far.. though Raynor looks a bit like John Marston from Red Dead Redemption oddly enough.

[linkspast]

Finally bought it.. I hope my computer can take it.. haha. if not...

see you guys on the battle field.

[prophetik music]

if not, give me a call =)

[noTuX]

I played through the first couple of missions and I really enjoy the game, but I think this game may have messed up my computer.

For some reason, after installing and running the game for the first time, my computer could only recognize half of the memory I originally installed. I maxed it out at 4GB a couple of years ago, and I checked recently before installing SC2.

I kept getting messages telling me to close any programs I might have running in the background to improve performance, and I though it was strange seeing that I was not running anything in the background and I am using the minimum graphics card settings when I know my graphics card is well capable of handling this game. When I checked my computer performance, it stated that I am only running with 1.5GBs of memory now. I have no idea what happened to my memory.

So, after my trial period is over, I'll probably stop playing until I figure out whats going on.

[prophetik music]

sounds like either you knocked your system and one of the sticks came unseated, or one of your sticks is dead.

games don't break hardware. either you did, or it died on its own.

[noTuX]

sounds like either you knocked your system and one of the sticks came unseated, or one of your sticks is dead.

games don't break hardware. either you did, or it died on its own.

I opened it up this morning and you're right. One of my memory sticks popped out. I'm still not very sure how that happened though, since I hardly ever touch my computer. It was just a crazy coincidence I guess...

After all of the crazy SC2 bugs I read about (ya know, with the overheating graphics cards), I assumed the game might have killed one of my sticks. I'm not a computer guru by any means, so my bad. LOL.

[Scrobble]

Figured i'd post here instead of making a new thread about it. Would anyone at all be interested in a sc2 tournament? if we got 6-8 people it could be pretty enjoyable.

[Mr. Bottle Rocket]

Am I the only one musically enamored with the wings of liberty main theme?

[BardicKnowledge]

Something largely different from SC1 worth noting:

Terran air to ground is good now! 2-3 Banshees can completely wreck a base if the enemy gets caught unprepared. I especially like them as augmentations of other forces -- attacking with your medivac/marine/maruaders? Send a couple cloaked banshees in from the other side.

Similarly, not enough people build detection against Terran players. 3 Banshees can kill 30 probes easily, and that's an entire base's worth of economy. Putting one turret/cannon up near your probes prevents 75% of this and is well worth your cash -- do it. Double points for protoss here as the cannon blocks reapers also.

[vega12]

Figured i'd post here instead of making a new thread about it. Would anyone at all be interested in a sc2 tournament? if we got 6-8 people it could be pretty enjoyable.

Of course. I wouldn't be surprised if you find a decent amount of interest in one such tournament.