I love reading stuff about Starcraft and pretending that it's chess instead.
I don't know why people always make the chess comparison. It's not like you have to be some amazing genius to play it.
you don't have to be an amazing genius to play chess either
that's what i meant.
It's like ohhhh it's like chess, that game only idiot savants can play because it's so complex.
uh, I think you're completely missing the point about chess
anyone who understands chess at all realizes that anyone can play it because the rules are fairly simple
but there's a vast difference between someone who understands the basic rules of the game and can technically play it within the rules, and someone who excels at the game
in the same way, starcraft isn't inherently complicated and anyone can play it
but playing it very well is a completely different matter
That's why it's so important to figure out hotkeys and grouping your production facilities. So that you can keep production up while focusing on the battlefield
It's surprisingly difficult to master despite knowing exactly what you have to do
Well, I mean if you still are not very good and just working on getting better at macro, then sure, only use it on MULEs.
But around top of silver/bottom of gold league scans start becoming really useful
twice now I've had a toss go Colossus against me, which is like, what? Against terran? Really? But the first time I was totally unprepared because my scout died long before the robo bay went down and I was caught unaware and with an entirely ground army. Got murdered.
Second time, I scanned, saw the robo-bay, tech-switched to vikings and medivacs and murdered the shit out of him.
Final units lost tally was about 1700 resources (me) to 5500 resources (him). Losing four colossi in 30 seconds hurts like a bitch.
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Ubikoh pete, that's later. maybe we'll be dead by thenRegistered Userregular
Apparently your macro should have included some detectors and air units.
I was going by
The most important thing in any economy-drive RTS is macro. Making "a lot of shit" can get you to platinum by itself.
For your next 20 games: Ignore timing. Ignore scouting. Ignore countering what he's doing. Ignore map control. Focus on getting a tight build that maximizes your economy and keep your minerals low at all times. Never miss a MULE calldown. Never miss a production round. Never miss a Supply Depot. Never make any building too late or too early. Never miss making a single SCV. Don't take your gas too early or too late. Then take your monstrous army, attack-move it somewhere, and keep making stuff. Don't even look at your army. Seriously.
Play 20 games like this and post the results. You should see vast improvement. Then you can move on to step 2.
I never got to the "monstrous army" part because 3 DTs killed my whole base when I didn't have scan because I used it all on MULEs
Why would I tech up to detectors or reinforce my wall with bunkers when I'm ignoring what he's doing
I'm just saying, this advice has not really helped me in any way because the games are over too fast for it to teach me anything
I understand that macro is important but this is not really a good way to learn macro in my experience
er, ubik, how long do you wait to attack? Like, what supply did you get to?
Because I wholeheartedly endorse this guy's method for learning, and I usually wreck a protoss player long before they get DTs.
I endorse it too, mostly because you shouldn't rely on scouting alone to prepare you for cloaked units, air attacks, or any sort of cheese. There are certain points in the game where you just need to have detection and AA, because tech switches can happen fast, and people can hide buildings and shit.
If you focus on macro alone you will develop that solid base of play that you can later tweak depending on the other styles of play you want to work on.
He teched straight to DTs. Didn't build any other unit besides probes until 3 DTs hit my base at 7:47 game time
At that point I had 12 marines and 4 Marauders, not really the "monstrous army" I was going to attack-move with going by that method above
My Engineering Bay and turrets were the next things to go down, but like I said, they would have been way earlier if I had scouted
so those people who say you should only use Orbital Command energy on MULEs?
Those people are fucking stupid
until you scan his base and repeatedly miss the fact that he either built 3 starports just out of range of your scan, or at an expansion
I've never claimed you should never scan, but scanning should not be a replacement for scouting
you're losing so many minerals and you just don't have the energy to be randomly scanning everywhere he might have an xp instead of just sending a worker
scanning has its uses, but too many terran players lean on it as a crutch
Scanning is useful when you have 3 Orbital commands and more spare energy than you can shake a stick at.
And even then it's pretty much just "Is he at this expo location?" or "Oh shit banshee's cloaked above my army." Anything less than 2 orbitals and a Rax or SCV will be a better investement.
I love reading stuff about Starcraft and pretending that it's chess instead.
I don't know why people always make the chess comparison. It's not like you have to be some amazing genius to play it.
you don't have to be an amazing genius to play chess either
that's what i meant.
It's like ohhhh it's like chess, that game only idiot savants can play because it's so complex.
uh, I think you're completely missing the point about chess
anyone who understands chess at all realizes that anyone can play it because the rules are fairly simple
but there's a vast difference between someone who understands the basic rules of the game and can technically play it within the rules, and someone who excels at the game
in the same way, starcraft isn't inherently complicated and anyone can play it
but playing it very well is a completely different matter
Yeah i know you understand that, but whenever i see the X RTS = chess argument, it is as I described.
Ubik: my non-aggressive builds have AA and detectors at 7:00 for that very reason
In the case of terran I'd say around 7min you need to have energy for a scan and at least an eng bay up. If you notice your wall is oddly losing health, or if a shuttle is dropping off things like look like a blurry predator in your base, scan that shit. and tower up asap.
edit: really in the case of the DT rush this is what scouting would have gotten you.
your SCV arrives in their base, you see a gateway and then a cyber core. Your SCV dies to a stalker. This could mean one of 8 billion things.
You later send a small force to see what's up. The ramp is forcefielded, you see nothing.
You scan the enemy base, you notice fewer units than normal at his ramp, unfortunately you can't use another scan to look deeper into his base.
DTs arrive in your base. Whoops, you spent your scan on looking at his base.
I love playing against people that don't wall off in 2v2! Especially when neither player is walled off and I can just run past their forces to each others base to harass the mineral line.
Ugh I didn't play for like two days and my rank dropped to 50. copper ranks are so liquid it's ridiculous. I need to get back into bronze.
I climbed up 30 ranks in like an hour and a half yesterday morning :P
yeah i'll prob work on that tonight. must crawl back into a real ladder. because seriously, copper is ridiculous.
Ah i know what you mean. Dropping a division then seeing some of the stupid stuff people try to do, it's like the benny hill music should be playing on repeat.
KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
edited May 2010
I hate when I have what I think is a good win, and then I look at the replay and see that the guy really wasn't playing very well.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited May 2010
Argh. Last night I was playing really well, climbed from rank 59 in my Platinum division to rank 36, all matches where my opponent was Favoured against me, then I played two even matches in a row, lost both and dropped back to rank 54.
I hate when I have what I think is a good win, and then I look at the replay and see that the guy really wasn't playing very well.
Hah! I had what I thought was a good win due to some expert play on my part. I looked back at the replay and I was doing some stupid stuff, like never building more than 15 drones until the very end.
I only won because it was ZvP and I did the 14 expand, so the protoss responds with the all out zlot aggression, which is basically playing into my hand. If he had responded better I would have been toast.
my TvP is pretty solid -- open with a 3rax, expand (~35 supply), get back into unit generation, then next 100 gas build a factory w/reactor, lift off and replace with a starport, and start pumping vikings or banshees, and medivacs. Vikings if he's going colossi, and banshees if he's going immortals. I do stick with the 3M pretty much no matter what -- even with colossi, if you have vikings on the field in any substantial number they'll tear through the colossi way faster than they can remove infantry.
I definitely win the vast majority of my TvP matches, but the other two? pretty much a tossup
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VivixenneRemember your training, and we'll get through this just fine.Registered Userregular
Colossi are tall enough to be eligible to be hit by the airborne vikings anti-air only attack, which does tremendous damage do them, while also being completely safe against the colossi ground only attacks while doing so. Also their cliffwalking ability doesn't help them escape, what with vikings being airborne
so as a lame bronzey dude I finally gave in to turtling and building four void rays to rape my enemy. Not many people at bronze or silver seem to be able to beat that.
It makes me sad tho because chargelots, dark templars, immortals and colossi are all so much fun. : (
turtling in general seems to be the best tactic at the level at which I am playing
Man, i've been playing Protoss the majority of my time and my wins have far between and usually someone who is even worse then me for me to really win.
I just went back to Tarren and holy shit, for some reason I feel way more confident all of a sudden with build orders and units. I have resources I never had as Protoss coming out my ears and I feel I can mass a larger armor quicker (Which is probably a design but still). I just rolled over this Protoss guy that went massing Void Rays by having a boatload of marines waiting for him. it took a few attempts to full breach his base since he had cannons everywhere but a few sieged tanks and MMM the first wave took that out and then an MMM Thor/tank run the second attack dealt with the rest of his base. He had some tricky Void Ray micro going and destroyed my expansion command center but by that point I had plenty of resources stocked to churn out another armory. I still made a lot of stupid mistakes but I didn't feel those mistakes completely destroyed me like I do playing Protoss. Definitely playing Tarren a lot more now.
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wanna watch dis craftcup
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
uh, I think you're completely missing the point about chess
anyone who understands chess at all realizes that anyone can play it because the rules are fairly simple
but there's a vast difference between someone who understands the basic rules of the game and can technically play it within the rules, and someone who excels at the game
in the same way, starcraft isn't inherently complicated and anyone can play it
but playing it very well is a completely different matter
suddenly i have like 1500 minerals and no troops because i got distracted and forgot to keep making stuff
It's surprisingly difficult to master despite knowing exactly what you have to do
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
I wish there was a single player beta as well
But anyway I'll be on later tonight and try it out.
is my battle.net tag
oh and US
Those people are fucking stupid
But around top of silver/bottom of gold league scans start becoming really useful
twice now I've had a toss go Colossus against me, which is like, what? Against terran? Really? But the first time I was totally unprepared because my scout died long before the robo bay went down and I was caught unaware and with an entirely ground army. Got murdered.
Second time, I scanned, saw the robo-bay, tech-switched to vikings and medivacs and murdered the shit out of him.
Final units lost tally was about 1700 resources (me) to 5500 resources (him). Losing four colossi in 30 seconds hurts like a bitch.
He teched straight to DTs. Didn't build any other unit besides probes until 3 DTs hit my base at 7:47 game time
At that point I had 12 marines and 4 Marauders, not really the "monstrous army" I was going to attack-move with going by that method above
My Engineering Bay and turrets were the next things to go down, but like I said, they would have been way earlier if I had scouted
until you scan his base and repeatedly miss the fact that he either built 3 starports just out of range of your scan, or at an expansion
I've never claimed you should never scan, but scanning should not be a replacement for scouting
you're losing so many minerals and you just don't have the energy to be randomly scanning everywhere he might have an xp instead of just sending a worker
scanning has its uses, but too many terran players lean on it as a crutch
And even then it's pretty much just "Is he at this expo location?" or "Oh shit banshee's cloaked above my army." Anything less than 2 orbitals and a Rax or SCV will be a better investement.
who wants to play this
I am sorry I had to kill you
Yeah i know you understand that, but whenever i see the X RTS = chess argument, it is as I described.
Ubik: my non-aggressive builds have AA and detectors at 7:00 for that very reason
In the case of terran I'd say around 7min you need to have energy for a scan and at least an eng bay up. If you notice your wall is oddly losing health, or if a shuttle is dropping off things like look like a blurry predator in your base, scan that shit. and tower up asap.
edit: really in the case of the DT rush this is what scouting would have gotten you.
your SCV arrives in their base, you see a gateway and then a cyber core. Your SCV dies to a stalker. This could mean one of 8 billion things.
You later send a small force to see what's up. The ramp is forcefielded, you see nothing.
You scan the enemy base, you notice fewer units than normal at his ramp, unfortunately you can't use another scan to look deeper into his base.
DTs arrive in your base. Whoops, you spent your scan on looking at his base.
so really just slow all around.
I climbed up 30 ranks in like an hour and a half yesterday morning :P
never really played the first one because it didn't work on my computer and back then I was too dumb to fix things on the computer
yeah i'll prob work on that tonight. must crawl back into a real ladder. because seriously, copper is ridiculous.
Ah i know what you mean. Dropping a division then seeing some of the stupid stuff people try to do, it's like the benny hill music should be playing on repeat.
Zzzzzzzz.
Hah! I had what I thought was a good win due to some expert play on my part. I looked back at the replay and I was doing some stupid stuff, like never building more than 15 drones until the very end.
I only won because it was ZvP and I did the 14 expand, so the protoss responds with the all out zlot aggression, which is basically playing into my hand. If he had responded better I would have been toast.
which one matters
I'm confused
you mean the id where you have
name.name?
The first one is the one that you will see most of the time in your games. It does not have to be unique.
the second one does have to be unique, and will not be seen unless you have two people in the same game with the same first name.
shit, I leagued up
I totally need to improve my TvT and TvZ
my TvP is pretty solid -- open with a 3rax, expand (~35 supply), get back into unit generation, then next 100 gas build a factory w/reactor, lift off and replace with a starport, and start pumping vikings or banshees, and medivacs. Vikings if he's going colossi, and banshees if he's going immortals. I do stick with the 3M pretty much no matter what -- even with colossi, if you have vikings on the field in any substantial number they'll tear through the colossi way faster than they can remove infantry.
I definitely win the vast majority of my TvP matches, but the other two? pretty much a tossup
Colossi are tall enough to be eligible to be hit by the airborne vikings anti-air only attack, which does tremendous damage do them, while also being completely safe against the colossi ground only attacks while doing so. Also their cliffwalking ability doesn't help them escape, what with vikings being airborne
It makes me sad tho because chargelots, dark templars, immortals and colossi are all so much fun. : (
turtling in general seems to be the best tactic at the level at which I am playing
https://medium.com/@alascii
https://medium.com/@alascii
I just went back to Tarren and holy shit, for some reason I feel way more confident all of a sudden with build orders and units. I have resources I never had as Protoss coming out my ears and I feel I can mass a larger armor quicker (Which is probably a design but still). I just rolled over this Protoss guy that went massing Void Rays by having a boatload of marines waiting for him. it took a few attempts to full breach his base since he had cannons everywhere but a few sieged tanks and MMM the first wave took that out and then an MMM Thor/tank run the second attack dealt with the rest of his base. He had some tricky Void Ray micro going and destroyed my expansion command center but by that point I had plenty of resources stocked to churn out another armory. I still made a lot of stupid mistakes but I didn't feel those mistakes completely destroyed me like I do playing Protoss. Definitely playing Tarren a lot more now.
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