The Escapist Presents: Starcraft 2 101: Tips & Tricks

Sir Bob

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Oh, and expect a rush. ALWAYS. Zerg can have up to 8 zerglings in your base in like 3-4 minutes, depending on the map size.

And another tip: Its not over until its over. I have won some games where the enemy got lazy after destroying my main base, but never bothered to check for instance the island expansion. He was not happy when he saw battlecruisers.

But worry not, those who haven't played it. Because where is a practice league before you do your official ladder games, in which each base has rocks at the entrance that you need to destroy first (so no rushing) and where game speed is VERY VERY low. Also, when you want to play full speed normal games, but feel like you are not up to it, you can play some unranked matches using the Custom Game function.
 

Sir Bob

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Not G. Ivingname said:
Sir Bob said:
Not G. Ivingname said:
Seven, in 2v2, know how you can help your teammate. If your Terran, know that SVC's can repair Protoss robots, while Medivacs can heal all Zerg units. If your Protoss, you can Crono boost allies production factories to have them make units faster. Go different tech types, one goes heavy on the infantry while the the other goes heavier mech or similar. Pull your own weight.
Thanks, didn't know this
Your welcome, which part?
Chronoboosting :D
 

Not G. Ivingname

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Sir Bob said:
Not G. Ivingname said:
Sir Bob said:
Not G. Ivingname said:
Seven, in 2v2, know how you can help your teammate. If your Terran, know that SVC's can repair Protoss robots, while Medivacs can heal all Zerg units. If your Protoss, you can Crono boost allies production factories to have them make units faster. Go different tech types, one goes heavy on the infantry while the the other goes heavier mech or similar. Pull your own weight.
Thanks, didn't know this
Your welcome, which part?
Chronoboosting :D
It's ok, most players don't seam to.
 

Ne1butme

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Not G. Ivingname said:
If your Protoss, you can Crono boost allies production factories to have them make units faster.
This ability was removed early in the beta for balancing issues.
 

Brainst0rm

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Thanks escapist :D I played the original Starcraft for years, but I was both quite young and quite awful. This was very helpful, especially the resource rate of return business.
 

Ne1butme

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Sir Bob said:
Also, I think their damage is enough (without upgrades) to 1 shot a worker. About 50 damage I believe.
It's 45 in the current build (+5 with each upgrade), but you're right, that's enough to 1-shot any worker. DTs are always fun to use. However, improvements to the game UI make them harder to exploit. In BW, the game only alerts you to an attack if your unit takes damage and surives the first hit. But if you one-shot kill a worker with a DT, then the enemy player isn't notified that his units are under attack. You can wipe out an entire resource line if your opponent isn't watching. Can't do that in SC2. As soon as any unit is attacked (even if it's an insta-kill), they are alerted.

http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_templar_%28StarCraft_II%29


edit: Too bad the beta is ending in a couple days, i would have liked to play against the escapist staff.
 

Sir Bob

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http://www.youtube.com/user/HuskyStarcraft#p/u/12/YelP49e_fZE

HuskyStarcraft, has a great video channel, and co-hosted the HDH beta tournament. This particular video is about his Planetary Thortress, or Thoritary Fortress, which is full of win.
 

Ardus_Virgo

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Man, I would love to play with some of the escapist staff. :D

And for that matter, people from the escapist!

Anyone who wants to be on my friends list, message me. :)
 

lomylithruldor

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Slycne said:
Sir Bob said:
4 workers on a gas is a nono as far as i'm concerned, 3 is the most effective.
As you can see in your movie, you always have 1 probe standing and waiting outside of the geyser.
Yes, but that one probe still gets in faster and you usually want to get as much Vespane as you can quickly for all your higher tech. I'll try to go find the math on it.


Edit:
Research done by Xiphoris.xiphoris

I ran some rough experiments measuring the number of minerals and gas measured per unit time as a function of the number of gatherers, to determine the optimal number of workers to maximize efficiency and to maximize gathering income.

Methodology:

I measured the numbers according to the statistic reported during the replay, that is, the Income statistic. It's pretty noisy, unfortunately, which made gathering this information difficult, but you can see the general trend. A better experiment could be conducted by measuring the actual income over time, rather than relying on the Income statistic reported by the replay viewer.

I measured each data point for about 5 mineral trips from a worker before adding another.

As a general observation: If two workers are harvesting from a mineral, they spend almost half full time on it. It appears that there is a slight amount of downtime, which is why more than 2 workers per mineral is productive in the results below. Although adding workers beyond 2 results in the significant visual appearance of wasted effort, income continues to increase.

The base in which I ran the experiment has 8 minerals. Where there is one number, that appeared to be the average. Where there are two numbers, it's roughly the average and the max value I saw for Income. Where there are three, it's min-avg-max.

Data

1 worker: 38 income
2 : 76 - 95
3: 114 - 133
4: 152 - 171 - 190
5: 210 - 229
6: 248 - 267
7: 286?
8: 324 - 362
9: 381
10: 400-149
11: 438
12: 476 - 514
13: 533 - 552
14: 571 - 590
15: 630
17: 667 - 765
18: 705 - 725 - 743
19: 705 - 762 - 800
20: 743 ?
21: 781 - 800
23: 800
25: 800 - 819
26: 800 - 819

Results:

Adding workers past 2 workers per mineral continues to increase income, but with diminishing returns. Income increases steadily until around 2 workers per mineral. At 1 worker per mineral, income is about 324. At 2 workers per mineral, income is about 667, roughly double. At three workers, income is about 800.

I additionally ran an experiment with gas. 3 workers produced an income of about 91 - 107. 4 workers produced an income of 107 - 122, consistently slightly higher.

Conclusions:

As the most precious resource, vespene probably deserves 4 workers per vespene geyser. Assigning 4 workers yields about 14% - 17% more income than 3.

The most efficient number of workers per mineral is about 2, while income continues to increase (with decreasing marginal income) until about 3 per mineral. 3 workers yields about 15% more minerals than 2 workers. In a competitive match, it is probably worthwhile to build workers until 3 per mineral, and then transition a third of them to one's expansion as it becomes available.

There are certainly variables and situations that will make you want to adjust, but I felt those were solid numbers to offer to new players as a rule of thumb. I don't know about everyone else, but I found that starting out I was always resource starved.
I don't think that having 4 worker per gas is worth it. Even if it does give you a couple more gas, you lose 50 mineral to get a couple more gas per minute?

I prefer getting 4 marines sooner than having a marauder one minute later. (Marine: 50 mineral, marauder 100 mineral, 25 gas; you have 100 more mineral because you can spare 2 workers worth of cash (2 vespene gas per base) + the marauder's minerals = 200)

Another tip I would add is not to queue production (or at least at much as it's possible). The money you need to build the units in queue is money you don't have to build upgrade sooner. If you're swimming in cash, build more unit producing buildings. So, you should not have idle buildings and no production in queue.

If you're not resource starved, you're doing it wrong.
 

Eric the Orange

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Apr 29, 2008
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One thing I've learned as a novice player is to build units/defenses early as possible. I still have problems dealing with a skilled zerg rusher.
 

LazyAza

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Great video, gonna link this to all my friends who are planning on getting sc2.
 

Slycne

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Feb 19, 2006
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lomylithruldor said:
I don't think that having 4 worker per gas is worth it. Even if it does give you a couple more gas, you lose 50 mineral to get a couple more gas per minute?

I prefer getting 4 marines sooner than having a marauder one minute later. (Marine: 50 mineral, marauder 100 mineral, 25 gas; you have 100 more mineral because you can spare 2 workers worth of cash (2 vespene gas per base) + the marauder's minerals = 200)

If you're not resource starved, you're doing it wrong.
True for shorter games at least, but don't you think that gas becomes increasingly more valuable as the match progresses? With everything but the most basic units requiring Vespane as the game progresses past Tier 1 you're going to be capped by your collection rate of Vespane. Big packs of Marines, Zergling and Zealots are usually not going to win you the match single handedly once you're past the first 5-10 minutes.

By resource starved I meant my collection rate in relation to my opponents.
 

Ne1butme

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Ardus_Virgo said:
Man, I would love to play with some of the escapist staff. :D

And for that matter, people from the escapist!

Anyone who wants to be on my friends list, message me. :)
I would but the only way to add friends in the current build is to hand out your email address to anyone that want to add. The system really sucks. There are no unique identifiers or names anymore.
 

John Funk

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Dec 20, 2005
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Ne1butme said:
Ardus_Virgo said:
Man, I would love to play with some of the escapist staff. :D

And for that matter, people from the escapist!

Anyone who wants to be on my friends list, message me. :)
I would but the only way to add friends in the current build is to hand out your email address to anyone that want to add. The system really sucks. There are no unique identifiers or names anymore.
I'm pretty sure that'll be in the final version, they're just testing the Real Friend thing for now.
 

Ne1butme

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John Funk said:
Ne1butme said:
Ardus_Virgo said:
Man, I would love to play with some of the escapist staff. :D

And for that matter, people from the escapist!

Anyone who wants to be on my friends list, message me. :)
I would but the only way to add friends in the current build is to hand out your email address to anyone that want to add. The system really sucks. There are no unique identifiers or names anymore.
I'm pretty sure that'll be in the final version, they're just testing the Real Friend thing for now.
There has been absolutely no comment from Blizzard on this subject, even though the battle.net forums have been howling about it. We had unique identifiers (and real Friend ID) prior to patch 12. They got rid of the unique identifiers, kept the Real Friend, and added Facebook integration. I don't use facebook, so i don't have an opinion on that last feature, but getting rid of the unique identifiers doesn't help them test the read friend ID.

I understand that this is beta and that things will change. But removing a vital (imo) mechanism to add friends without violating privacy seems like a step backwards.

I hope you're right John. I really do.
 

Sir Bob

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God forbid Starcraft 2 becomes the more hardcore farmville... "Sir Bob has found a stray zergling!" "Sir Bob needs more pylons, click here to help him construct additional pylons"

Also, I would hate to share my private email address (which is linked to my Blizzard account because of WoW) with all kinds of randoms..
 

lomylithruldor

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Slycne said:
lomylithruldor said:
I don't think that having 4 worker per gas is worth it. Even if it does give you a couple more gas, you lose 50 mineral to get a couple more gas per minute?

I prefer getting 4 marines sooner than having a marauder one minute later. (Marine: 50 mineral, marauder 100 mineral, 25 gas; you have 100 more mineral because you can spare 2 workers worth of cash (2 vespene gas per base) + the marauder's minerals = 200)

If you're not resource starved, you're doing it wrong.
True for shorter games at least, but don't you think that gas becomes increasingly more valuable as the match progresses? With everything but the most basic units requiring Vespane as the game progresses past Tier 1 you're going to be capped by your collection rate of Vespane. Big packs of Marines, Zergling and Zealots are usually not going to win you the match single handedly once you're past the first 5-10 minutes.
Well, Tier 1 units are pretty good even in late game if they're upgraded. A good bunch of speedlings can outmaneuver a slow opponent and head straight for his siege tanks and will take out the shield on those immortals pretty quickly or keep a defeated army from retreating to his base, same for charging zealots. Marines have better overall DPS per resource than marauders and can shoot air.

Sure they can't win a game alone, but that's not my point. Getting a couple more of them instead of one tier 2 unit is ok. You'll also start doing them one minute earlier since you don't have to build the 4th workers per vespene and wait for the gas and attack sooner.

Also, I don't think that walling off with a bunker is really a good idea since it's pretty vulnerable to a baneling bust (5 banelings to destroy a depot, 6 for a bunker, but 13 for the barrack). You can always build your bunker behind a supply depot. Your marines inside will still be able to shoot out(bunkers give +1 range to units inside so they'll shoot farther than marines inside your wall.). You also don't have to lose production time while moving your building.
 

Lancer723

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4 workers on one gas, while technically the most optimal way to harvest gas, is also a monstrously huge waste of a worker unit.

The return for the fourth worker is miniscule when compared to the return it could be as the third worker on mineral patch, or the second worker on a different mineral patch. In Starcraft terms, you're talking about saturation. With your workers, you want the most return possible for each worker. You get such a small increase in gas from the fourth worker that could have been much better spent on saturating a mineral patch. Basically you get a greater return with that worker on minerals than you would on gas, and even though high tech units cost more in gas, minerals are still the meat of your spending, and if you sacrifice early game minerals for late game gas, you are extremely vulnerable in the early and mid-game with only a minimal advantage in the late game.

This is based only on my experience playing the game, and honestly I don't have the ability to research it myself. I'm open to playing with any escapists on Bnet, just send me a PM.

Happy hunting.
 

Greg Tito

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Sep 29, 2005
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Sir Bob said:
Not G. Ivingname said:
Seven, in 2v2, know how you can help your teammate. If your Terran, know that SVC's can repair Protoss robots, while Medivacs can heal all Zerg units. If your Protoss, you can Crono boost allies production factories to have them make units faster. Go different tech types, one goes heavy on the infantry while the the other goes heavier mech or similar. Pull your own weight.
Thanks, didn't know this
Actually, you can't Chrono Boost teammates anymore. They removed that several patches ago.

As for your other tips, you are spot on.