Hi... I'm really new to the Starcraft series and I just got the SC2 beta. I'm trying to improve (like watching the replays, talking to my teammates and opponents, etc.) but I'm still kinda confused. Is there any advice you can give a beginner/noob like me?? (like just general advice such as, how many barracks/spawning spool/gateways to have per expansion, simple strategies and tactics, anything really. I just need help. Thanks (BTW...I play all races, I don't have a specific race I only play)
only 1 spawning pool or any other zerg building except for the evo chamber u need 1-3 of thoose NEVER more than 1 spawning pool k?
1) Get a specific race. You may think that it's not hard to learn all three, but in practice, IT IS 2) You should have about 25 workers per expansion, and 2-3 unit producing buildings in your main for each expansion you have. 3) Try focusing on 1-2 different types of units and just mass those, along with 2-3 mobile detectors (ravens, obvservers, overseers) so you don't die to cloaked units. 4) Continued from 3, get weapon, armor, and research upgrades for the units you picked. So if you are terran and going marine + marauder, be sure to get the weapon and armor upgrades from the engineering bay ASAP, as well as all the ability research for them from the tech lab! 5) Use control groups. You do so by selecting a group of units or structures, then hitting ctrl-# (any number 1-0), then when you hit that number you automatically reselect that group. Probably the most important use of this is to group all your unit producing structures together, so even when you are controlling your army out in the field, one key brings up your entire production facility so you can quickly rebuild your army once you fight the enemy. 6) Oh and I think you don't understand zerg. The only building that zerg has to produce units is the hatchery, all other buildings are just to unlock new units and research. Should tide you over till silver league
i'd recommend against picking a specific race right away. each one has a different play style and you probably won't know which one suits you best. just play all 3 and work on your general macro skills first: keeping up worker count, scouting out the enemy, harassing the enemy, and balancing out expanding/army/tech. also, don't just pick units and mass. there's several problems with this: 1. unit mixture is key, each one has different strengths and weaknesses. you need a mixture to cover each other. learn to be flexible, figure out what your enemy is trying to get and get the best unit to counter it. 2. massing up units = not harassing the enemy. unless you KNOW your enemy is stronger than you and you need to stay defensive inside your base, don't wait around for a big army before attacking. put the pressure on your opponent early.
Just play Terran as it is the most powerful race by far to play as beginner/average player. Have fun with Marine/Marauder/Medivac combo or Bansheeing your helpless enemies like all the other terrans do.
Thanks for the advice. I have some quick questions... 1) As a beginner, is it better to rush or "turtle" 2) Also as a beginner, should I be focusing on micro or macro, like finding a good build order?
turtling is a bad habit. i wouldn't recommend it. also, rush and turtle aren't your only options- expanding and getting map control is what's generally recommended. focus on macro first, at least the first few minutes of the game, along with scouting. getting a good economy up early and learning to pick the right counters is probably the most useful skill you'll have no matter what skill level you're playing at. learn and get used to it early.
It's all about macro. Worker production, build order, and unit production. Watch games on Youtube to learn how strong players do things. It's kind of hard to teach with pure text until you have a better grasp on things. Best to see it first. Watch the replays of all the games you lose. Here are some basic things you can try... Terran: One barracks with tech lab, another with reactor, and mass marauders and marines. Get a decent amount and attack. Protoss: Get a gateway, gas, and cycore. Then upgrade warp tech and just mass units with 4 warpgates. Stalkers and zealots and sentrys. Zerg: Mass drones until you have enough for a pool and then get gas and a queen. Get a roach warren and use spawn larva to mass roaches. For rushes: Terran: Mass scvs and get 4 barracks. Then make mass marines and go kill your opponent with like 3 groups of marines or something. Zerg: Don't build any drones. Get a spawning pool as soon as you can, then get 2 more drones. Make 6 zerglings when the pool finishes and attack with everything. Protoss: Send out a probe first thing in the game. Make a pylon when your psi is 9 (or you have 8 probes and one building). Stop building probes at this point. Get 2 gateways and mass zealots for a rush. I got rid of some of the details to make it more simple. It'll be 90% as effective.
A few questions regarding Banelings: Do they attack/explode automatically or do I have to target them? If I send more against one target and this is being destroyed, what do the others do? Does their splash damage hurt my own units (I believe, I've read something surprising in this forum about "friendly splash damage fire")?
As I understand, if you A-attack (as in click 'a', and click beyond the units you want them to hit) they will move to that spot and detonate automatically when they can deal damage to a unit or building along that path. I do not know what happens if the banelings are idle. You could try it in a game vs a computer if you want. Just send some into his base and see what happens. If you do, post what you find out here, I'm interested. They do not do friendly splash damage. A side note, if they are burrowed and you hit detonate, they will detonate dealing damage to ground units above them. Like land mines.
because I've seen it in replays: if blings are dropped from an overlord into an enemy crowd, do they automatically attack/detonate or do they sit until ordered?
I've not been playing that long either and i'm definately a complete newb to the starcraft franchise, but since finding out about the game and getting my hands on the beta, i've gone so crazy over it i've dedicated a pretty substantial amount of my time really learning the nature of the game and the underlying phillosophy of playing it well. So i feel i have come to a point of understanding that may help you out. Starcraft 2 is essentially a game of realtime chess, on crack.The game is incredibly balanced and so unlike other RTS games like CnC for example, where you would rely very little on intell and allot more on quick build orders and massing units at your enemy, Starcrafts nature entails games unfold in a much more emergent reactive and dynamic way and thus should be played adheering to this basic principal. Choices are almost always situational as each race is completely unique yet at the same time entirely mutually exclusive. Every single unit in the game for each race has a specific strategical purpose and is specifically designed to be an effective counter against a specific unit(s) in the other two races. Indeed it is a game of specifics, and having a tight grasp of the underlying statistical mechanics at play is probably the most important thing for you to develop. As getting that attack upgrade means the difference between 2 shoting an enemy unit and 3 shoting an enemy unit (but of course you need to know 'which enemy unit' said unit is the best counter for inorder to capitalize on the most efficient use of the attack upgrade as it doesn't class you a straight 1/3 cut in shoot to kill ratio across the board). In practice it is often the little details like these that can have the most drastic effect on the outcome of a given battle, which in turn may be the tipping point in your economy overpowering theirs (providing you have macroed a robust enough economy, which involves being competent enough at map control and multitasking to develop and safeguard your economy while scouting, teching, judging, reacting, microing e.t.c.), giving you the slight edge in unit production and ultimately winning you the game. Understanding the symbiotic nature of starcraft goes a long way, as the mechanics are very detailed and very sensitive to each other, allot more-so than other RTS games, the more you play the more you will come to notice this. A beats B, D beats E, E beats C, C beats A, B beats C, D beats B, A beats E, C beats D,e.t.c. On a practical basis, you need to get really good at doing 3 or 4 things at once, by 1) intellectualizing, thinking ahead, trying your best to judge your enemies every movement and possible strategy through map control and controlling the flow of information on the battle field. 2) physical play, by really getting used to the hotkeys and control groups and developing effective ways of being able to develop and manage your economy, tech development, creation and support of expansions and overall growth of presence on the map, while still being able to be 'elsewhere' on the map while doing all this, scouting, microing, battling, you name it, keep your background 'work' as 'background' and 'automatic' as possible and keep your eyes in the field and on the front line as much as possible, this is what i mean by multitasking, and this is serious multitasking. Make sure you always try to Keep a clear and strategical mindset and develop enough of a knowledge base of each of the races to think three or four steps ahead, and act accordingly. Don't be purely re-active, be pro-active also. Come into a game with an idea of your strategical play for that match. Practice enough to really fine tune certain strategies you develop and develop a quick reflex to react to your opponent. Don't completely drop your strategy though, alter it, flow. Strategies should be fluid, They should be an ethereal impression of where you want to be, the tactics you deploy to get there are always a blank canvas. Luckily, due to the rigid mechanics of starcraft there is always a 'specific thing to do' in a given situation. Basically, get to know the game, then get to know it even better, then make it your best friend, well... you get the point. Each race has a specific 'nature', learn these natures and learn how to counter them. For example the Zerg are known as the 'swarm' The basic phillosophy of zerg is aggressive expansion, map control and literally pouring your units at the enemy until they are over run. No other race can create units as fast as the Zerg, the 'creep' that follows the zerg wherever they go grants a 30% speed bonus to all zerg units. Think of the Flood from Halo. Mass insectoid face rape rampage style. The units are weak compared to the other races, so the idea is to outnumber the enemy and over run. This kind of stuff u need to find out. The nature of each race, and how those basic natures interact. Then there are the unit counters. For example, again with zerg, zerglings are good against stalkers as stalkers are ranged units and are weak at close ranges, zerglings are also terrible against zealots as zealots are a 'meelee' unit slightly stronger than zerglings, Banelings on the other hand have a bonus Vs organics so rip through zealots, they are also brilliant against marines/marauders but terrible against any armoured type unit, like stalkers. Void rays are powerful against ground units but get ripped up by corruptors, which insidently can 'only' attack air units. Hydras are also good against void rays and other air units, they are ground based, and also very squishy with very low HP, if facing other ranged ground units, its an idea to keep them on the creep for the added speed to control the range and 'micro' them back and forth to keep them out of range of marines/marauders while still being able to shoot them from the edge of their range (unless your up against stalkers which i believe have a longer range than marines/marauders and of course blink, in which case lings would be a better strategy than hydras, again it depends on the attack/deff upgrades amongst a myriad of other situational elements). Or you could put a line of Roaches in front of your hydras, as roaches are the zergs mid game armored unit. Making great meat shields for the weaker hydras with a higher damage output and a longer range sat in back. Of course you could also use a pack of lings instead of you know your enemy is using ranged units for a more effective counter. All of this requires you to have known 'this' circumstance in advance through controlling the flow of information, and to have built the required buildings to create the correct counter, manage your economy enough so you have enough supply formed and resources allocated theoretically to one side to be ready to create said counter force exactly when needed and be ready for this situation when it happens, instead of not knowing and letting them run you down with superior units that they have found out you have. Which all requires knowing what 'they are doing' almost always by quick glances at buildings they have, constant scouting and information gathering and strategical thinking in terms of where they might be expanding on the map or where they might be pushing on your ground. Its a dance of minds. A strategical, emergent tango of minds... on crack. I don't know if this has been of much help to you. I know there isn't much in the way of specifics. What i am trying to do is develop in you the right mind set. Help you get a feel for the underlying phillosophy, for the soul of this game, in its many beautiful ways. I hope this has been of some help. Peace.
banelings, they will automatically detonate if they aren't controlled and they encounter an enemy. You want to becareful as they can make your own banelings detonate as well if there are too many that detonate close to them, so you want to split them up a little.
Summary: get your economy up and going 16 workers on minerals, 3 on each gas, pump some units at same time, scout your enemy, find out if they are rushing you or what kind of units he is going - counter his units. build buildings when you see you have more money than you can spend. The major problem of players, is that they don't get their economy fast enough, and not scouting intelligently.
I have to say i was in teh same boat with you. i played a bit of sc but wasent good at all and that translated into sc2. the thing that saved me and put me into top 20 platinum twice was youtube videos. it can be borning but those videos of profesional games with commentaries really helped me alot. they show you what was workign and how it was defeted. expansion timing. micro ideas and overall strategies. also practice is key and picking a race is a must. i play terran and i watched over 50 terran pro games and i have to say some of it will rub of. gl hf
Wiki advice Hey Rush Second, I am looking to incorporate your advice into the new StarCraft 2 wiki my firm is creating (www.stratics.com / www.thegamenet.com). We have created a hugely popular League of Legends wiki (www.thelolwiki.com) and want to create an even better and bigger SC2 wiki. Please feel free to sk ype me at curtis.pyke or email me at curtis@thegamenet.com anytime, as I'd like to involve you, with your permission of course. Cheers
