Life In 19x19

CSamurai wrote:So, I bought SC2. And I'm playing through the single player missions. Arg. Choices like Haven make me all twisted up inside.

In other news, I'm terrible at multiplayer, I'm in the practice league, and uh, yeah, I suck. Of course, I usually suck at multiplayer in RTS. It's not my forte. I tend to hyperfocus, develop too slow, and build too many things. If I get in a battle, I totally forget whatever else is going on, and often look up to having a LOT of minerals.

Of course, I still haven't played much (a few games in beta until getting rushed by protoss got old, which brings me to a question, how do you get 10 stalkers in under a minute?) so I'm still not even sure what builds I'm interested in yet. I tend to find myself trying to be too diverse.

I'll post my ID when I'm at home (don't remember my number) so that you all can point and laugh.

Later,
CSam

I think I have the same issues as you. The whole forgetting to do other things while trying to win a skirmish is a major one. It's also a major reason I want to learn to use control groups more often. Only because that way, you do not have to look back and forth, and can just do it with hotkeys. It's simple, but requires a lot of effort to remember to do this.. Also, I'm going to finish single player in teh easiest mode, just because it's more entertaining and a lot easier.

I will just say though, viewing streams and replays are more helpful than you'd imagine

ketchup wrote:
I think I have the same issues as you. The whole forgetting to do other things while trying to win a skirmish is a major one. It's also a major reason I want to learn to use control groups more often. Only because that way, you do not have to look back and forth, and can just do it with hotkeys. It's simple, but requires a lot of effort to remember to do this.. Also, I'm going to finish single player in teh easiest mode, just because it's more entertaining and a lot easier.

I will just say though, viewing streams and replays are more helpful than you'd imagine

Oh, I use control groups compulsively. 1 is usually my 'Move it' group, where I just grab everything I could want, and move it as one big group. 2-5 tend to be the breakdowns for the groups. Marines/marauders/other ground pounders get one group, things which transform (I'm looking at you, seige tanks) get another group, and things that fly get another group. Usually I'll slip in a group of base defense at 6, 7-0 tend to be production facilities. I just /forget to use/ them when I'm in a battle. This is assuming I even get past building barracks, which I often don't. I'm not very sure of how fast I should be building production units, and how much I should save up for combat units.

Having played mostly single player, I miss units like the medic when I get into multiplayer, but I understand somewhat the balance issues that lead to it.

Also, I miss having big effin guns atop my bunkers. Those are useful.

Since we have some strong sc2 players here, I thought I might post a replay to get some suggestions. This is a random vs. random match on Blistering Sands. It turned out to be a ZvT, with me (bronze) as zerg, and one of my friends (gold) as terran. I did an early zergling harass, expanded, and then went into roach/hydra. My attack on the terran base went poorly. I saw his medivac-based counterattack coming, so I knocked one ship out of the sky, but he still wiped out the army at my base. My opponent stopped my other harassment pretty easily, and then came in with siege tanks, marines, and marauders. My hydras gave him a little scare, but they did not do much to stop him. The game was basically over at that point. My income was lower than the terran's for much of the game, so I know my #1 problem was not building enough drones. I also failed to scout an expansion. Ideas for things like WHEN to drone up, when to switch to different units, ideas for tactics, etc. would be appreciated!

Replay at: http://replayfu.com/r/vwthpg

While you're harassing the opponent, you should be building extra drones (or lings, if you're going for an all-in, I suppose). Early game, the longer you have a few hundred minerals sitting around, the further behind you get (unless you're saving up specifically for a fast expand, or something).

Also, your harass didn't really work, you got locked out of his base and weren't able to pull any scvs off his mineral line, which means your early pool automatically landed you behind in terms of economy.

Then you expanded and built a queen (though you didn't spawn larva as often as you could), this means you had 3 production queues while you still only had 10 or so drones (well, by the time they finished you had around 15 drones. You probably needed only one or the other of a queen or new hatchery at that point (especially if you had spawned larva more often), giving you an extra 150 to 350 minerals to spend on more drones early on.

Later on you lost all your zerglings without doing any damage, and fell behind with your army as well.

Is anyone looking for a buddy to be on a team with? I'd like to try some 2v2 (or 3v3 or 4v4 for that matter) to get a change of pace from 1v1 all the time. I'm currently hovering around 1000 pts in Diamond, playing mostly Random. I play mostly to improve, but I love to try new ideas. Shoot me a PM if you're interested.

fwiffo wrote:I think it would behoove you to watch the semi-final series between Fruit Dealer (cool) and NEXLiveForever. Not watching them might be regrettable.

Oh, actually I did end up watching this semi-final as well as ITR's set against ogsEnsnare. I got into a tablesaw accident 2 days ago and my left hand hurt so much after surgery I couldn't sleep that night so I figured...why not? Needless to say, I'm glad I saw it (even though I was in a zombie-fied state during classes) and I'll be rooting for the fruit dealer himself. Both players I noticed tend to expand rather quickly, so I'm hoping for some epic macro games between the two if they stick with their builds.

FFFFFFFRRRUUUUUUUUUUUUU.

MountainGo wrote:Is anyone looking for a buddy to be on a team with? I'd like to try some 2v2 (or 3v3 or 4v4 for that matter) to get a change of pace from 1v1 all the time. I'm currently hovering around 1000 pts in Diamond, playing mostly Random. I play mostly to improve, but I love to try new ideas. Shoot me a PM if you're interested.

After my hand fully heals on antibiotic creep, I'd be up for team games!

Oh geeze dude, table saw accident sounds bad. I guess you're typing, which means it couldn't be TOO gruesome, but take care of yourself!

fwiffo wrote:Oh geeze dude, table saw accident sounds bad. I guess you're typing, which means it couldn't be TOO gruesome, but take care of yourself!

I think I'm typing slower than when I was trying to learn Dvorak ...basically using only 8 fingers to type. I've been playing more Go as a result though since I can't play SC2 like this, so maybe it's not so bad . Here's a picture of my work gloves when it happened.

Araban wrote: I think I'm typing slower than when I was trying to learn Dvorak ...basically using only 8 fingers to type. I've been playing more Go as a result though since I can't play SC2 like this, so maybe it's not so bad . Here's a picture of my work gloves when it happened.

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. Hope you are doing okay, and hopefully reattached successfully without too much damage. Although, I do not know too much about such injuries, it cannot be anything I'd consider fun.

Aww, that's unfortunate.

CSamurai wrote:So, I bought SC2. And I'm playing through the single player missions. Arg. Choices like Haven make me all twisted up inside.

In other news, I'm terrible at multiplayer, I'm in the practice league, and uh, yeah, I suck. Of course, I usually suck at multiplayer in RTS. It's not my forte. I tend to hyperfocus, develop too slow, and build too many things. If I get in a battle, I totally forget whatever else is going on, and often look up to having a LOT of minerals.

Of course, I still haven't played much (a few games in beta until getting rushed by protoss got old, which brings me to a question, how do you get 10 stalkers in under a minute?) so I'm still not even sure what builds I'm interested in yet. I tend to find myself trying to be too diverse.

I'll post my ID when I'm at home (don't remember my number) so that you all can point and laugh.

Later,
CSam

I will try to answer on this one as I am in the same position. 2 weeks ago I was last of my copper league and getting crushed every game. I never really played any RTS except from WC3 campain before SC2.
For a few days now, I have been winning 7 out of 10 games. Here is what I think helps a lot (thanks to day9, and life in 19x19 advices).
1) Like in Go, you must play games a lot. Experience count.
2) Build CVS/Drone/Whatever_it_is_named_for_zerg non stop. You build a barrack, build a cvs, you scratch your head, build a CVS, you blink, build a cvs. Don't queu them up.
3) Never be supply blocked.
4) Never be supply blocked.
5) Your production building should always be producing something. Even if you didn't scout and have no clue what to produce to be effective.

What you want to see as a result is you minerals will be always low. It is actually a good sign. You should pick an all around build order of internet and practice it.

In my case I picked as protoss the 9 pylon, 13 gateway, 14 gaz. But I was being rushed all the time with no units. So I want to 9 pylon, 10 gateway. I start with a weaker economy, but by applying the points I mentionned earlyer I usually end up with a bigger army than my opponent and in the copper league, it seems that is it all that count.

Now there are a few things I look for depending on the opponent race :
Protoss : canon rush or 8 out of 10 times they wall in and go for void rays.
Terran : Banshees, and the jet pack guys.
Zerg : 6 pools rush.

Also when attacking, don't try too often to target something when moving on your opponent, your unit might move around to be in range of this special target while your opponent is already firing on you. At our low level, I find it more effective to A and click somewhere close to your target so your troops stop and fire as soon as they can THEN to target specific things with specific units. Most of the time, your guys will target the correct unit anyway, but not focusing.

Hope this help and that it is clear enough !

Oh and you should watch Day9 newby tuesday on youtube !

Cheers

Araban wrote:

fwiffo wrote:Oh geeze dude, table saw accident sounds bad. I guess you're typing, which means it couldn't be TOO gruesome, but take care of yourself!

I think I'm typing slower than when I was trying to learn Dvorak ...basically using only 8 fingers to type. I've been playing more Go as a result though since I can't play SC2 like this, so maybe it's not so bad . Here's a picture of my work gloves when it happened.

Accckkk. That must have been terrifying. I hope it heals well. My dad likes to tell a story about the time at art center when he kept some fellow sleep-deprived student from cutting his hand off with a band saw...

Good luck with the healing! My father had a similar accident, and at the ER they had to splint his... injured... thumb. He said that the worst part was walking through the hospital, while people grinned and gave him huge thumbs-ups. At least now he can use his major injury as an excuse when he loses videogames. =P

Araban wrote:Here's a picture of my work gloves when it happened.

Sweet Jesus! Looks like something out of a horror movie. Considering that my main hobbies right now are Starcraft 2 and playing the piano, I would be bitterly frustrated if I ever lost use of my hands. Get well soon.

Peter Hansmeier wrote:Since we have some strong sc2 players here, I thought I might post a replay to get some suggestions. This is a random vs. random match on Blistering Sands. It turned out to be a ZvT, with me (bronze) as zerg, and one of my friends (gold) as terran. I did an early zergling harass, expanded, and then went into roach/hydra. My attack on the terran base went poorly. I saw his medivac-based counterattack coming, so I knocked one ship out of the sky, but he still wiped out the army at my base. My opponent stopped my other harassment pretty easily, and then came in with siege tanks, marines, and marauders. My hydras gave him a little scare, but they did not do much to stop him. The game was basically over at that point. My income was lower than the terran's for much of the game, so I know my #1 problem was not building enough drones. I also failed to scout an expansion. Ideas for things like WHEN to drone up, when to switch to different units, ideas for tactics, etc. would be appreciated!

Replay at: http://replayfu.com/r/vwthpg

I took a look at the first half of your replay. Your #1 issue is macro. As you are aware, you needed to hatch many more Drones. (Don't use that Terran player as a point of reference--he spent eons not making any SCVs!) You also want to be aiming at having all your Hatcheries spawning Larvae at all times. I noticed many times your camera was right on top of an idle Hatchery with a Queen next to it, but you didn't spawn Larvae. So just try to get in that mentality of always checking your Hatcheries (hotkeys will help) to make sure you see those four magical green balls. It also helps to have status bars turned on, since you will see a gray progress bar for injections on top of each hatch. As for knowing when to make Drones, the rule of thumb that I use is once my Spawning Pool is up, I always use the same number of Larvae for Drones as I do for army units (i.e. anything other than Overlords). According to my math, this makes you produce workers at pretty much the same rate as the other races (assuming you're on top of your injections). On another note, you forgot to man some Extractors, so watch out for that as well.

I really hesitate to criticize anything other than that. Until your macro is reasonably close to ideal, you're not really getting a good picture of the "true game". To make a go analogy, you can't really teach someone to improve their play on a 19x19 board until they understand corner, side, center. You'll know when your macro is improving when you start being able to win by a-moving your army into the opponent's main. That Terran was a perfect example of someone who could have been easily beaten that way. At somewhere around 18 minutes into the game, he had 2000 minerals and was producing not a single unit!