The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Starcraft 2: PA tourney Friday, GOM TV S3 Sunday! Tournament info in 2nd post.
MNC Dover
Full-time Voice ActorKirkland, WARegistered User regular
Full-time Voice ActorKirkland, WARegistered User regular
The Starcraft II discussion thread
So you wanna craft some stars, huh?
It's cool, we've all wanted to play Starcraft 2 even when we didn't want to admit it. Sure, we'd say mean and hateful things like, "Supreme Commander is sooo much better." or "Starcraft 2 is just Starcraft 1 with better graphics." You may be right, you may also be extremely stupid but who's to say?
The truth is that this SC2 thread goes a million miles per hour and will leave you in the dust if you aren't prepared. All things are open to discussion here from build orders, practice partners, race match-ups, tournament talk, and general bizarre Korean stuff (usually brought to you by the letter S and the number 86). In order to keep up, I highly recommend you bookmark the following sites:
The Day[9] Daily Live Stream. Sean "Day9" Plott is an 11 year Starcraft veteran, so he knows his shit. He does a live stream Sunday through Thursday that airs 7pm PST/10pm EST. If you miss a stream, you can watch it, and every other streams he's ever done, in his archives. BOOKMARK HIS SITES! You will not be disappointed.
State of the Game A weekly podcast hosted by Day[9], JP, Tyler, and inControl. If you don't know who these people are, you clearly aren't watching enough SC2 tournament stuff. Just bookmark the damn site and listen to it on the go.
HD Starcraft. Good site for beginners to learn from and watch higher end players as well. Being Youtube videos, you can fast forward and rewind to help learn strategies and build orders.
HuskyStarcraft. The brother site of HD Starcraft. Another good site for watching videos of foreign tournaments and for general learning by watching pros.
Gretorp's live stream. A high level Terran player who has amassed quite a following.
Team Liquid. Team Liquid is the biggest Starcraft related fan site out on the Internet today. They follow everything Starcraft related including the pro scene. Many great articles, forums, and information can be found here. A must bookmark for any Starcraft fan.
Starcraft II Liquipedia. Team Liquid has created a wikipedia site for everything SC2 related. This will be updated as time goes on and all information found here should be legit as possible.
Team Liquid Tournament Tracker. Want to play in some SC2 tournaments? Bookmark this link to see what's running now and upcoming in the future.
GOM TV.net. The only officially Blizzard backed tournament spot in Korea. Has a dedicated pair of English casters in the form of Artosis and Nick "Tastless" Plott, Day[9]'s older brother. Great high-end play to be found here. No really, watch this if you've never seen how insane the Korean's take to SC2.
Who is Artosis?
OK that's all cool, but I want to play with some PA people. Easy, follow these 5 simple steps.
1) Start by joining the master PA friend list. DO THIS FIRST. It also doesn't hurt to add your battle.net ID into your signature. If you can't do either of these, then we don't want to be your friend.
2) Bookmark the PA SC2 master list. This will help you find other players without begging in thread for other players to play against. It will also help you find other players to help practice with that are in your skill range. If you use the "view" -> "list view" options found at the top, you can reorganize the list to help you find what you need. On the list view page, you can click on the pull down tabs to look at just players of a certain race or rank. Whatever you want. Use this resource!
3) Sign up to gamereplays.org. This is a site where you can upload your replays. The perfect way to share your replays with the thread and get advice on how to get better. The site also gives you an awesome image when you link it to the forum making it stand out more.
4) Download Mumble voice chat. Since the forum has been back and forth about having a large voice chat system in place but can't decide between Skype and Ventrillo, we've decided to go with Mumble instead. Download it via the link above, install it, and follow this information to get with the rest of us:
Connect to the server: vx36.commandchannel.com (or v.exosquad.net) port 31117
Password is: wang
Update: Exoplasm has set up a webpage detailing how to make Mumble work. Go here to learn more.
5) The PA SC2 1v1 Ranking site. Sign up for this awesome site to see where you stand in the standings amongst fellow PA members. Remember, this is important in the nurturing and expanding of your e-peen. Add yourself by clicking on [Manage Characters] on the top right side.
2) Bookmark the PA SC2 master list. This will help you find other players without begging in thread for other players to play against. It will also help you find other players to help practice with that are in your skill range. If you use the "view" -> "list view" options found at the top, you can reorganize the list to help you find what you need. On the list view page, you can click on the pull down tabs to look at just players of a certain race or rank. Whatever you want. Use this resource!
3) Sign up to gamereplays.org. This is a site where you can upload your replays. The perfect way to share your replays with the thread and get advice on how to get better. The site also gives you an awesome image when you link it to the forum making it stand out more.
4) Download Mumble voice chat. Since the forum has been back and forth about having a large voice chat system in place but can't decide between Skype and Ventrillo, we've decided to go with Mumble instead. Download it via the link above, install it, and follow this information to get with the rest of us:
Connect to the server: vx36.commandchannel.com (or v.exosquad.net) port 31117
Password is: wang
Update: Exoplasm has set up a webpage detailing how to make Mumble work. Go here to learn more.
5) The PA SC2 1v1 Ranking site. Sign up for this awesome site to see where you stand in the standings amongst fellow PA members. Remember, this is important in the nurturing and expanding of your e-peen. Add yourself by clicking on [Manage Characters] on the top right side.
And finally, a list of other PA related SC2 stuff.
The official PA SC2 tournament thread! You too can sign up and play in our very PA tournaments. For best results, tell 'em Dover sent ya.
Livestream for our friend Exoplasm. Good quality. Watch it.
Livestream for our friend Trus. Beware of loud music.
Livestream for our friend Ash. Broadcasting the SC2 Arcadia tournaments.
PA SC2 Steam Group. A great place to meet up with other PA forum people and set up games, talk strats, or just bullshit around. This is the most common place for us all to meet before big tournaments and stuff. Very useful!
Comprehensive unit spreadsheet. A publicly editable spreadsheet that details all of the costs, build times, damage, and other unit specific information you could ever ask for. Make sure to read this first before asking how much damage hydralisks do versus air units. Special thanks to our very own Vin for making it.
The beginner's guide on how to play SC2 and tips to get better. If you are brand new to Starcraft or RTS games in general, start by reading this beginners guide written by our very own forum member, eeSanG. He is a Diamond level player who knows his stuff and was generous enough to take the time to write out this very informative piece on the basics of SC2. It's a long read, but quite worth it. (spoilered for size)
Livestream for our friend Exoplasm. Good quality. Watch it.
Livestream for our friend Trus. Beware of loud music.
Livestream for our friend Ash. Broadcasting the SC2 Arcadia tournaments.
PA SC2 Steam Group. A great place to meet up with other PA forum people and set up games, talk strats, or just bullshit around. This is the most common place for us all to meet before big tournaments and stuff. Very useful!
Comprehensive unit spreadsheet. A publicly editable spreadsheet that details all of the costs, build times, damage, and other unit specific information you could ever ask for. Make sure to read this first before asking how much damage hydralisks do versus air units. Special thanks to our very own Vin for making it.
The beginner's guide on how to play SC2 and tips to get better. If you are brand new to Starcraft or RTS games in general, start by reading this beginners guide written by our very own forum member, eeSanG. He is a Diamond level player who knows his stuff and was generous enough to take the time to write out this very informative piece on the basics of SC2. It's a long read, but quite worth it. (spoilered for size)
eeSanG's basics of Starcraft 2[/size] for all you new players to SC2.
I have written this to help anyone who is interested in playing but have little experience and no one to teach them.
There are many things in Starcraft that are so basic that no one mentions them. However, they’re also incredibly difficult to find out for yourself without a natural intuition for Real-Time Strategy. This makes it extremely difficult for people new to RTS’s to learn about them so they get trashed by everyone and everything; the entire process can be extremely demoralizing and leaves only a bitter taste in the neophyte as they quit in frustration. These basics are so fundamental that without them, every player is doomed to failure against someone with solid mechanics.
I am going to go over many of these basics. Here are some simple tips that apply to almost every RTS that involves resource management:
* Keep building workers/harvesters.
* Don’t let resources build up.
* Learn build orders.
* Don’t play blindly, scout often.
The slightly more advanced mechanics all branch off from these principles.
Why you want to keep building workers.
Workers in Starcraft are great investments; you spend time and resources building them and they’ll provide great returns on those investments. The most significant mechanic behind Starcraft is resource management: you need minerals and gas to do everything. The more you have, the more you can do; but, the reverse also applies: the less resources you have, the more limited you are in options. This is macromanagement.
Okay, so more workers mean more resource gathering, but where do you stop? You don’t. In Starcraft 2, every base has 8 mineral patches and 2 gas geysers. Maximum saturation is 3 workers per mineral patch and 3 per gas; however, the optimal amount of workers on minerals is actually 2. There are heavy diminishing returns after 2 workers per mineral patch and returns stop altogether after 3. So why don’t you only make 22 workers, 16 for minerals and 6 for gas? Because you will want to expand.
Expanding is a critical aspect of micromanagement. Two fully saturated bases have double the production of one: this means twice the upgrades and twice the units. That is an unfair advantage over your opponent if you’re playing 2 bases to 1. Expanding does require an investment though, you cannot recklessly place bases all over the map or you risk losing everything to an aware opponent.
So back to workers: Why don’t we stop at 22? Because you will want to expand and you will want your investment to make immediate returns once you do. How do you do this? By transferring several workers from your first saturated base to your second (For future reference, transferring of workers will be called maynarding, as that is the term used by competitive Starcraft players). So say you kept building workers and you have about 34 (6 on gas, 28 mining), 4 of your workers mining are actually doing absolutely nothing. You still want to produce this many workers because once you expand (which you should when you safely can) you can maynard 17 workers to your expansions and put 6 on gas with 11 on mining.
Doing this, you’re now fully saturated on gas in two bases and have 11 workers on minerals each base. This is clearly insufficient and suboptimal but now you have 2 worker producing buildings and by splitting evenly, you can hit optimization in both bases with 5 worker production cycles. Well, 11 isn’t an optimal amount, so why not only move 16 and have 16/6 on minerals? You could, but because you have 2 worker production buildings you would have to go through 0 and 10 worker production cycles to hit optimization and that is inefficient because you have only one building doing all the work instead of dividing it equally. This doubles the amount of time for your bases to hit optimized mining and every worker built at an optimized mineral line is worth less and less.
So to keep the first facet of macromanagement strong, worker production is required beyond optimization. You’ll want to keep producing workers at both bases after your first expansion because the late game phase is usually played on 3 or more bases and you will want to continue maynarding workers to new expansions.
Why you don’t want resources to build up.
Worker production is the first stage of macromanagement: actually getting the resources. The second facet of macromanagement is actually using those resources. As you gather resources, you use them to make units for fighting. Every resource hoarded is a potential investment you did not make. If you engage in a battle with 1000 minerals hoarded, that is 1000 minerals worth of units you could’ve had at the fight had you macromanaged better. 10 Zealots, 20 Marines, or 40 Zerglings can significantly change the outcome of a battle. Unused resources mean smaller armies and smaller armies usually mean battles lost. Having 10 Marines is not going to win against 10 Zealots; you need more Marines for it to be a fair fight.
To prevent yourself from running into unfair fights, you want to be continuously spending your resources on something. It can be workers, buildings, upgrades, or units. Just spend it. But! Don’t waste it on things you will never use. Don’t get speed upgrades on a unit that you never plan on using. Efficient spending is implicit. It is not obvious; it is not shouted at you when you lose. Players will have excuses on why they lost, but underlying all that is usually because they did not spend their resources efficiently.
Another bad habit that many players have is immense amounts of unit queuing. Yes, you are spending resources, but it is not being spent efficiently. You make absolutely no returns on unit production until those units are actually made. Filling a unit queue right as or before a fight starts means those are units you could’ve already had. How? By making more unit producing buildings. Learning how many unit producing buildings you can have per base is difficult to learn, precise amounts can only come from experience.
Using Protoss as an example: A single mineral line can support roughly 3 Gateways running full time with minimal ‘teching’ (unlocking upgrades or new units). It can support 2 with heavy tech investments and it can barely support 4 Gateways with absolutely no tech investment. Running 4 Gateways usually ends in disastrous results for the Protoss player unless the opponent is quickly killed or there are no tech investments left to make. This is because if the opponent can get severely ahead in tech, the Protoss is at a significant disadvantage due to a lack of viable options.
If you have resources piling up, you have two options: make more unit producing buildings or expand and then making more unit producing buildings. Being choked on unit production is an easy way to lose after trading armies with your opponent. Having too many buildings is better than not having enough.
There are two ways of losing via smaller army: not having enough or not spending enough resources. Both of these are easily avoidable.
Now that we’ve covered resource management, we continue onto build orders.
Learn build orders.
Build orders are a prearranged order in which you construct your buildings. Good build orders are those that everyone uses; they are cookie cutter. Now, some might rant about how cookie cutter builds destroy innovation and creative play. No! Build orders allow innovation and creative play to be efficient. They are cookie cutter for a reason, because they are the most effective openings in regards to resources and time. Starcraft and Starcraft 2 are battles of resources, but they’re also battles for time. A few seconds difference can change the entire game through a delayed unit, a building, or an entire expansion. Many openings trade time for resources or resources for time. Time creates advantages in tech, resources, or army size.
Learning build orders is more difficult in Starcraft 2 because it’s so new, not everything has been discovered or tested. It’s your job now to create, adopt, or steal build orders that are the most efficient. Constructing a building 5 seconds earlier than normal can lead to enormous advantages but not learning or refining build orders can lead to constructing buildings later than necessary!
For Starcraft 2, there are two ways to create the opening Pylon as Protoss. You can either make it at 9 supply and have it finish at 10 so you can Chrono Boost or you can cut an early Probe to create a Pylon at 8 and Chrono Boost the 9th Probe immediately. The difference between these builds provides a difference of about a second in the first Gateway, so this is an extreme example. I myself enjoy placing the Pylon at 8.
The difference between a solid and shaky build order can mean living or dying during the early game.
Don’t play blindly, scout often.
Map hacking, the most prominent hack in Starcraft, provides perfect information on the map and the opponent. This third-party program is looked down upon by the competitive community because it provides such an unfair advantage and because it is cheating.
You can simulate these same advantages through proper scouting. A player’s first scout is usually their worker. Many beginners believe that they are sent out for the sole reason of finding where the opponent is. Naïve! Keeping your scouting worker alive reveals so much valuable information, but only through proper analysis that comes with experience.
The subtle things will tell you much: the progress on the spawning pool will tell you whether to expect early Zerglings or not. A 10pool (a spawning pool created after the 10th Drone but before the 11th) will most certainly make Zerglings while a 13pool may only make 2 or skip them altogether. A surviving worker can reveal a Protoss player’s entire tech tree if kept alive: 1 Gate into Cybernetic Core? 2 Gate? THREE Gate (3 means you are going to get rushed)? 0 Gates? You just got proxy’d, get ready for a fast rush. A scouting worker can easily dodge Zealots through proper micro, many will need to get a Stalker or Sentry to kill it if they don’t want you to see their tech tree and that means gas spent, unit created, tech delayed.
When the first scout dies, many no longer scout for the rest of the game. Foolish! Continue to send out scouts; they can be either workers, a fast and inexpensive unit (Zergling), or a unit that is concealed and difficult to kill (Observer). Knowing where your opponent’s army is, knowing what it’s made of, and knowing when they expand are all critical intel. Location allows you to set up flanks or ambushes. Composition allows you to create the correct counters to their units, and knowing when and where an expansion is built opens up an opportunity to attack before they make returns on such a heavy investment. However, don't needlessly sacrifice units into the maw that is your opponent's army. Scout often, but be conservative with them.
Scouting is much harder and is much more demanding on your multitasking than macromanagement. You shouldn’t let your macromanagement suffer for the sake of scouting, but neither should you forsake scouting altogether. Balance is key to consistent success, though knowing when to take risks is also important.
Combining these fundamentals together means that your armies will be as large as possible, your economy as efficient as can be, and the knowledge of your opponent’s play are as clear as crystal.
These basics are just that, fundamentals. A lack of fundamentals means that defeating an opponent with strong mechanics and safe play will be an impossibility. Real-Time Strategies incorporate strategic play but that is meaningless when lacking in basics. Smaller armies, weaker economy, and blind play are disadvantages the player only gives himself; they are completely unnecessary and preventable.
So here they are again so you can drill them into your head. The basics of resource based RTS’s are:
* Keep building workers/harvesters.
* Don’t let resources build up.
* Learn build orders.
* Don’t play blindly, scout often.
It can be difficult to do everything simultaneously at first, but it becomes more natural through practice!
Good luck and have fun. Until next time.
I have written this to help anyone who is interested in playing but have little experience and no one to teach them.
There are many things in Starcraft that are so basic that no one mentions them. However, they’re also incredibly difficult to find out for yourself without a natural intuition for Real-Time Strategy. This makes it extremely difficult for people new to RTS’s to learn about them so they get trashed by everyone and everything; the entire process can be extremely demoralizing and leaves only a bitter taste in the neophyte as they quit in frustration. These basics are so fundamental that without them, every player is doomed to failure against someone with solid mechanics.
I am going to go over many of these basics. Here are some simple tips that apply to almost every RTS that involves resource management:
* Keep building workers/harvesters.
* Don’t let resources build up.
* Learn build orders.
* Don’t play blindly, scout often.
The slightly more advanced mechanics all branch off from these principles.
Why you want to keep building workers.
Workers in Starcraft are great investments; you spend time and resources building them and they’ll provide great returns on those investments. The most significant mechanic behind Starcraft is resource management: you need minerals and gas to do everything. The more you have, the more you can do; but, the reverse also applies: the less resources you have, the more limited you are in options. This is macromanagement.
Okay, so more workers mean more resource gathering, but where do you stop? You don’t. In Starcraft 2, every base has 8 mineral patches and 2 gas geysers. Maximum saturation is 3 workers per mineral patch and 3 per gas; however, the optimal amount of workers on minerals is actually 2. There are heavy diminishing returns after 2 workers per mineral patch and returns stop altogether after 3. So why don’t you only make 22 workers, 16 for minerals and 6 for gas? Because you will want to expand.
Expanding is a critical aspect of micromanagement. Two fully saturated bases have double the production of one: this means twice the upgrades and twice the units. That is an unfair advantage over your opponent if you’re playing 2 bases to 1. Expanding does require an investment though, you cannot recklessly place bases all over the map or you risk losing everything to an aware opponent.
So back to workers: Why don’t we stop at 22? Because you will want to expand and you will want your investment to make immediate returns once you do. How do you do this? By transferring several workers from your first saturated base to your second (For future reference, transferring of workers will be called maynarding, as that is the term used by competitive Starcraft players). So say you kept building workers and you have about 34 (6 on gas, 28 mining), 4 of your workers mining are actually doing absolutely nothing. You still want to produce this many workers because once you expand (which you should when you safely can) you can maynard 17 workers to your expansions and put 6 on gas with 11 on mining.
Doing this, you’re now fully saturated on gas in two bases and have 11 workers on minerals each base. This is clearly insufficient and suboptimal but now you have 2 worker producing buildings and by splitting evenly, you can hit optimization in both bases with 5 worker production cycles. Well, 11 isn’t an optimal amount, so why not only move 16 and have 16/6 on minerals? You could, but because you have 2 worker production buildings you would have to go through 0 and 10 worker production cycles to hit optimization and that is inefficient because you have only one building doing all the work instead of dividing it equally. This doubles the amount of time for your bases to hit optimized mining and every worker built at an optimized mineral line is worth less and less.
So to keep the first facet of macromanagement strong, worker production is required beyond optimization. You’ll want to keep producing workers at both bases after your first expansion because the late game phase is usually played on 3 or more bases and you will want to continue maynarding workers to new expansions.
Why you don’t want resources to build up.
Worker production is the first stage of macromanagement: actually getting the resources. The second facet of macromanagement is actually using those resources. As you gather resources, you use them to make units for fighting. Every resource hoarded is a potential investment you did not make. If you engage in a battle with 1000 minerals hoarded, that is 1000 minerals worth of units you could’ve had at the fight had you macromanaged better. 10 Zealots, 20 Marines, or 40 Zerglings can significantly change the outcome of a battle. Unused resources mean smaller armies and smaller armies usually mean battles lost. Having 10 Marines is not going to win against 10 Zealots; you need more Marines for it to be a fair fight.
To prevent yourself from running into unfair fights, you want to be continuously spending your resources on something. It can be workers, buildings, upgrades, or units. Just spend it. But! Don’t waste it on things you will never use. Don’t get speed upgrades on a unit that you never plan on using. Efficient spending is implicit. It is not obvious; it is not shouted at you when you lose. Players will have excuses on why they lost, but underlying all that is usually because they did not spend their resources efficiently.
Another bad habit that many players have is immense amounts of unit queuing. Yes, you are spending resources, but it is not being spent efficiently. You make absolutely no returns on unit production until those units are actually made. Filling a unit queue right as or before a fight starts means those are units you could’ve already had. How? By making more unit producing buildings. Learning how many unit producing buildings you can have per base is difficult to learn, precise amounts can only come from experience.
Using Protoss as an example: A single mineral line can support roughly 3 Gateways running full time with minimal ‘teching’ (unlocking upgrades or new units). It can support 2 with heavy tech investments and it can barely support 4 Gateways with absolutely no tech investment. Running 4 Gateways usually ends in disastrous results for the Protoss player unless the opponent is quickly killed or there are no tech investments left to make. This is because if the opponent can get severely ahead in tech, the Protoss is at a significant disadvantage due to a lack of viable options.
If you have resources piling up, you have two options: make more unit producing buildings or expand and then making more unit producing buildings. Being choked on unit production is an easy way to lose after trading armies with your opponent. Having too many buildings is better than not having enough.
There are two ways of losing via smaller army: not having enough or not spending enough resources. Both of these are easily avoidable.
Now that we’ve covered resource management, we continue onto build orders.
Learn build orders.
Build orders are a prearranged order in which you construct your buildings. Good build orders are those that everyone uses; they are cookie cutter. Now, some might rant about how cookie cutter builds destroy innovation and creative play. No! Build orders allow innovation and creative play to be efficient. They are cookie cutter for a reason, because they are the most effective openings in regards to resources and time. Starcraft and Starcraft 2 are battles of resources, but they’re also battles for time. A few seconds difference can change the entire game through a delayed unit, a building, or an entire expansion. Many openings trade time for resources or resources for time. Time creates advantages in tech, resources, or army size.
Learning build orders is more difficult in Starcraft 2 because it’s so new, not everything has been discovered or tested. It’s your job now to create, adopt, or steal build orders that are the most efficient. Constructing a building 5 seconds earlier than normal can lead to enormous advantages but not learning or refining build orders can lead to constructing buildings later than necessary!
For Starcraft 2, there are two ways to create the opening Pylon as Protoss. You can either make it at 9 supply and have it finish at 10 so you can Chrono Boost or you can cut an early Probe to create a Pylon at 8 and Chrono Boost the 9th Probe immediately. The difference between these builds provides a difference of about a second in the first Gateway, so this is an extreme example. I myself enjoy placing the Pylon at 8.
The difference between a solid and shaky build order can mean living or dying during the early game.
Don’t play blindly, scout often.
Map hacking, the most prominent hack in Starcraft, provides perfect information on the map and the opponent. This third-party program is looked down upon by the competitive community because it provides such an unfair advantage and because it is cheating.
You can simulate these same advantages through proper scouting. A player’s first scout is usually their worker. Many beginners believe that they are sent out for the sole reason of finding where the opponent is. Naïve! Keeping your scouting worker alive reveals so much valuable information, but only through proper analysis that comes with experience.
The subtle things will tell you much: the progress on the spawning pool will tell you whether to expect early Zerglings or not. A 10pool (a spawning pool created after the 10th Drone but before the 11th) will most certainly make Zerglings while a 13pool may only make 2 or skip them altogether. A surviving worker can reveal a Protoss player’s entire tech tree if kept alive: 1 Gate into Cybernetic Core? 2 Gate? THREE Gate (3 means you are going to get rushed)? 0 Gates? You just got proxy’d, get ready for a fast rush. A scouting worker can easily dodge Zealots through proper micro, many will need to get a Stalker or Sentry to kill it if they don’t want you to see their tech tree and that means gas spent, unit created, tech delayed.
When the first scout dies, many no longer scout for the rest of the game. Foolish! Continue to send out scouts; they can be either workers, a fast and inexpensive unit (Zergling), or a unit that is concealed and difficult to kill (Observer). Knowing where your opponent’s army is, knowing what it’s made of, and knowing when they expand are all critical intel. Location allows you to set up flanks or ambushes. Composition allows you to create the correct counters to their units, and knowing when and where an expansion is built opens up an opportunity to attack before they make returns on such a heavy investment. However, don't needlessly sacrifice units into the maw that is your opponent's army. Scout often, but be conservative with them.
Scouting is much harder and is much more demanding on your multitasking than macromanagement. You shouldn’t let your macromanagement suffer for the sake of scouting, but neither should you forsake scouting altogether. Balance is key to consistent success, though knowing when to take risks is also important.
Combining these fundamentals together means that your armies will be as large as possible, your economy as efficient as can be, and the knowledge of your opponent’s play are as clear as crystal.
These basics are just that, fundamentals. A lack of fundamentals means that defeating an opponent with strong mechanics and safe play will be an impossibility. Real-Time Strategies incorporate strategic play but that is meaningless when lacking in basics. Smaller armies, weaker economy, and blind play are disadvantages the player only gives himself; they are completely unnecessary and preventable.
So here they are again so you can drill them into your head. The basics of resource based RTS’s are:
* Keep building workers/harvesters.
* Don’t let resources build up.
* Learn build orders.
* Don’t play blindly, scout often.
It can be difficult to do everything simultaneously at first, but it becomes more natural through practice!
Good luck and have fun. Until next time.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
MNC Dover on
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Posts
Tournament hosted by our good friend Dhalphir!
When: Starts this Saturday, November 20th at 8am (GMT +8). This equates to Friday, November 19th at 7pm EST/4pm PST. You can play your games earlier if your opponent is ready. All first round games should really try to be finished by Saturday 12pm (noon) (+8 GMT). This equates to 11pm EST/8pm PST. This will help keep things moving smoothly.
Rules: All games are BO3 for all matches except the final which is BO5.
Maps: Metalopolis for the first game, loser selects map from there. It can be any 2 player or 4 player map from there out of the list - Blistering Sands, Lost Temple, Xel'naga Caverns, Metalopolis, Scrap Station, Steppes of War, Jungle Basin, Shakuras Plateau (basically current ladder maps)
Notes: Possible streams available, check back for updates/links. Also, players are responsible for updating their own brackets. We are using an honor system, so play nice and have fun!
Bracket:
Full bracket found here. Quick link to bracket image only below.
GOM TV Season 3
Full tournament description found here. The games begin on Monday, November 22 at 7pm KST. This would equate to Sunday, the 21st at 5am EST/2am PST. More updates for streams and such when we get closer to starting time.
Dreamhack Winter 2010
Full tournament description found here. More updates closer to starting time.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
http://www.dreamhack.se/dhw10/event-scheduele/e-sports/starcraft-ii/
I'm surious as to why Ghost would need a buff - as far as I can tell they are stronger than High Templar in every single way? EMP has a longer range, effectively deals 100 dmg to everything in it's AOE, and critically cannot be dodged. This is before you factor in the fact that it can drop nukes, stealth, reveal cloaked units, and continue doing ranged damage once it's energy is gone, unlike HT. Surely it is one of the hardest counters in the game, with the added bonus of doing utterly badass dmg to everything anywhere near the unit it's targeting?
Storm does only 80 dmg, which usually works out to about 40 as MMM stim and run away. EMP does 50 dmg to Zealots, 80 dmg to stalkers, and 100dmg to pretty much everything else Protoss has, every time.
**edit** I forgot to mention that Ghosts have EMP straight out the gate, with no research, whereas HT's can literally do nothing except merge into a quasi-useless archon until you research a very expensive spell, which then requires another expensive research process before you can use the skill (once), immediately.
Steam: adamjnet
But shut the goddamn fuck up about it before terran starts to use them.
I think the only balancing act is that every ghost is one less marauder and they are very expensiveso they can't be got THAT early.
http://challonge.com/pasc2
Asap.
So we can get as many games going.
This participation is super high. Next time I might split it into two tournaments.
Okay, gotcha.
Hey Dhal, PM me if I missed anything and I'll edit the 2nd post.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
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A lot of people feel like Terran is at a disadvantage in lategame PvT, once the storms come out. Blizzard has expressed sentiments agreeing with that (as well as the idea that Terran is at an early game advantage with Stim).
I don't really agree with that - I think it's already kinda ridiculous how high tech you have to go to beat a bunch of tier 1 units, and EMP is a very convincing counter-counter to Storm. However, when Blizzard says something like that, they usually follow through with some nerfs. I was speculating about ways they could do that, since it doesn't seem like they could make Storm itself any harder to get unless you had to physically drive to Blizzard's headquarters and request the research in person, and the damage and radius are already about as low as they can be while still being just effective enough.
B.net: Kusanku
If they do nerf storm, they need to make it a LOT easier to get or people will just stop using it altogether, further pigeonholing Protoss into Colossi play to counter bio and meaning that the default Terran build in TvP will be bio with vikings. Right now the only thing stopping a Terran player going bio with vikings against Protoss every game is the possibility that the Protoss will just go HT instead of Colossi and until he knows for sure he can't commit to vikings. But then, against HTs you want medivacs instead of vikings anyway and whoops thanks to Terran's fucked up tech tree they are on the same tech anyway!
It is just ridiculous that Protoss and Zerg have to so clearly telegraph their tech paths but I could have complete vision of a Terran opponent and not know what he's really doing for sure until the units begin to come out.
I've generally found that both mass lings, or Corruptors and Broodlords coupled with Overseers make a mockery of Ghosts, although that's just in my experience.
Well, yeah, but Ghosts aren't a proactive strategy that Terrans use, they are a reactive unit that counters casters and does it ridiculously well.
Why do Corrupters counter Ghosts? They can't hit them.
And also, not to pull out the "Stfu lower league player" but discussions about what counters what don't really apply that much below sort of Platinum-ish because in basically every Bronze/Silver/Gold match, you lost because your macro wasn't good enough, not because you didn't do the right counter.
When I go protoss and I have HTs out and my enemy is either terran or zerg, I feel like Im always in the fight. I don care if they have 100 more food then me, a good couple storms can change the tide so quick.
Where as with Ghosts, every time I go against protoss and I have my ghosts, I drop EMPs all up on them, but for some reason it doesnt seem to turn the tide that much.
My guess is that most of Protoss units are larger, this they dont bunch as much. So when you drop the EMP on them you maybe hit 3-5. When you drop a storm on a MM ball or a muta ball or a hydra ball or whatever, you destroy like 20 units.
When you look at the numbers of the two units, ghosts look vastly over-powered, its the silly size of the protoss units which change that. At least, thats how its feels from my experience.
But why use HT against terran when your colossus can basically say "hey ghosts, you dont come passed this line."
It is a conundrum, but at the same time this discrepancy between the races puzzles me as I don't see it in the replays I watch. Generally I see Toss using the HT to just barely hang on against a far more massed and mobile force of Terrans. I think if the Protoss have Colossi, Templar, Immortals and Stalkers then they may indeed be unstoppable, but once you're running off the required 3 bases, if the Terran is doing the same he can churn out his Tier 1 stuff unbelievably fast.
The concensus seems to be that Toss are too weak in early game and too strong in late game. I'd like to see an increase in Shields for all their units, combined with a reduction in health, but not as much as the shields have been increased by. That way all T1 have more surviveability in the early game, but because that is provided by extra shields, EMP actually has more of an effect in the late game.
Steam: adamjnet
edit: this is a serious post
Oooh, get you big-leaguer :P
I'm Silver, but love the discussion part of SC2 as much as anyone
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
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I want to try to go marauders with medivacs and ravens. Ravens drops the defense drone, then the medivacs safely fly over all the stalkers and drops marauders around the colossus
Or more realistic, raven/viking. "Your stalkers can do nothing to save your colossus."
***edit I wonder how they work against a muta ball, never tried it but would be interesting***
there are definitely a lot of good terrans who put Vikings to great use against Colossi. Also, stimmed Marauders can ruin your day if they get a good position.
IMO, the worst thing about Colossi is that robo openings in PvT are so risky. 1/2 gate->robo can be a build order loss against a pure marine rush, which isn't really scoutable since Terran is walled in and can kill the scout with the first couple marines.
I think it's where you put an e-bay down on an expansion to block the other guy from expanding.
It's when you loose so badly you put your copy of SC2 up on Ebay, vowing to never play again.
EDIT: both toss , nice i think PvT is my best match up
Crovax.436 Steam: Crovaxan
Something terrible stupid people do specifically to piss me off.
Even if they're not playing against me and I'm not spectating or even near the game, I get angry at it.
God it's annoying.
I think in the brief time I was playing again I saw it in every single fucking TvZ.
*cough*gas steal*cough*
I find the same, so I'm gonna start practising 3 gate expands tonight.
Steam: adamjnet
Totally different.
I'm not the one putting down the manner ebay.
Also I can't kill the manner ebay in half a second with a single stimmed marine.
seeker misile does 100 AoE dmg, so... just watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-EQM9PDVDA
B.net: Kusanku
fucking terran
EDIT: But wait, that dude had Marines out. Why did he need other units?
HAHAHA. Oh, that was beautiful.
Looking forward to seeing many people!
When I played Terran, after people learned to magic box Mutas vs. Thors, Ravens were my new best friend. I got to do that myself a couple times - it's glorious.
or you could just not be terrible and run them away from missles.
ALSO, WHO ARE YOU MR GULIO O:
A lot of people have signed up on the official PA friend list found in the OP. Follow the instructions under the yellow text. Add yourself today!
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
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