Starcraft 2

[MetalCaveman]

Normally I try playing without cheats, but this time I think it would have been impossible for me to finish it without their help. Also, I got StarCraft II a couple days after I got the anthology so I kinda just wanted to learn more about the game and the story before moving on to WoL.

[Mal]

Being Asian, I'm a disgrace. Odd how Starcraft never found me. Maybe its time. I don't see Command and Conquer ever coming back.

[Eleven]

I don't play strategy games anymore, but I think it was with Warcraft 3 that they started to have varying missions in the campaign. Warcraft 2 and Starcraft were at the time when strategy games like these were more on base building. But you guys already know that.

 

Also, i thought the stereotype was with Koreans and not Asians in general.

[Mal]

Chinese is close enough.

[deanb]

I thought China had distanced itself from Korea

[toxicitizen]

 
Hello, Mr. GOH!, and welcome to FLD's School of Hard Knocks StarCraft II!

 

It's possible you already know some of this. But in the interest of thoroughness, I'm assuming you are playing as unoptimally as humanly possible.
 
Disclaimer: I am absolutely shit at this game. I can't and won't advise you on anything even remotely strategic. That would be of no help to you at all because I suck.

 

"Should I be building tanks or vikings?"  I DON'T FUCKING KNOW SO DON'T ASK!!

 

 
I play Terran, so I'll be using Terran terminology. But this all applies to whichever race you choose to play. Now, with that out of the way. Let us begin. 
 
While playing, do you ever find yourself clicking on your buildings to select them? Or, worse, clicking on the bottom-right corner menu to select stuff to build?
If the answer to either of those questions was yes, then STOP THAT SHIT RIGHT NOW YOU STUPID SON OF A BITCH!
 
Hotkeys.    Learn to love them. They are your very best friends.
 
First, the numerical keys. Pressing ctrl + any number will bind whatever you've currently got selected to that number key. Then you just press that number again to reselect them instantly. Those are called control groups. They are crucial to your survival. It is essential that you train yourself to use them. Find a configuration you're comfortable with and stick to it. For example, I put my Command Centers on 6, my Barracks on 5 and use 1-3 for my army.
 
As soon as the game begins, you should hotkey your Command Center/Hatchery/Nexus to whichever key you prefer. This is important because it allows you to reselect it at any time without having to look for it or move your mouse or take your eyes off of whatever you're currently doing. You just press that number. Double-tapping will instantly bring you to its location.
 
Next, letter shortcuts. These, you'll have to learn. Don't stress about it too much, though. At the low level, you don't need to be building half of this shit anyway. So you really don't need to know them all at this point.
 
Now, here's why this is so very important. Say you're in the middle of the map fighting your opponent. Your army is getting massively raped. Your numbers are dwindling. You need to reinforce but you can't leave your units alone or they'll all die! Oh shit! Oh shit! OH SHIT!! 
 
CALM. THE. FUCK. DOWN!
 
If you're using your hotkeys, there is no problem here! Press 5, your barracks are now selected. Press a-a-a-a, you're now training 4 marines. Press 1, you've just re-selected your army and can carry on getting them all slaughtered like the sorry excuse for a commander that you are!. It took you all of one second and you didn't move an inch.  Once again. 5-a-a-a-a. It's that simple! If you have multiple Barracks on your hotkey (as you should), production will be divided up evenly between them. That's one marine per Barrack if you have 4 of them. So all those marines will be coming out at the same time.
 
That's pretty much the gist of it. If you haven't been doing this already (and if your APM really is at 54, then I seriously doubt that you have), your APM is going to skyrocket once you start playing this way. Other than that, there are only three other things I can advise you to do with complete confidence. 
 
1. NEVER STOP MAKING SCVs! You should have about 30 of those fuckers per base. That's roughly 24 on your minerals and 3 on each gas. That's called base saturation. If you reach 30, then you probably should've expanded to a second base a while ago. And when you do expand, grab a bunch of SCVs off of your main and send them there right away. And once again, you don't need to look for your Command Center. It's hotkeyed to 6, remember? 6-s-s-s. That's three SCVs that just entered production. 
 
2. SPEND YOUR MONEY! If at any point over the course of the game you find yourself having hundreds upon hundreds of minerals or gas, then YOU'RE WAY BEHIND AND YOU'RE GOING TO LOSE LIKE THE FAILURE YOU ARE!! Spend. Your. Money. But it's also very important you don't spend your money idiotically, either! Which brings us to...
 
3. DON'T QUEUE STUFF UP. EVER. It's the worst possible way to waste your money. You need to spend it on shit that will help you RIGHT. THE. FUCK. NOW! Not in 5 minutes. NOW! 
 
If you queue up 5 marines, that's 250 minerals you just spent but you're only getting them one at a time. It's not a catastrophe if you queue up one or two every now and then. It saves time and at first you'll probably keep forgetting to maintain constant production anyway. But any more than that and you're wasting precious money better spent elsewhere. Maintaining and managing your economy is a HUGE part of this game.

 

So, all your Barracks are training marines, you say, but you still got 500 minerals piled up. What then? Well, that's three additional Barracks right there! Grab three SCVs from your mineral line, press B-B (that's Build - Barracks! Hotkeys!), hold shift (you can queue up actions that way) and place the three Barracks WHEREVER THE HELL YOU LIKE! It's important you select as many SCVs as buildings you are making because otherwise you're violating rule #3: DON'T QUEUE STUFF UP! Not only will it take longer but you'll also be spending money on something that won't be of any use to you for a long time!  
 
One additional note about action queueing: holding shift with three SCVs selected will allow you to put down three buildings and send all three of them to build in a single action. And for maximum efficiency, keep shift held and right-click back on your minerals. That way, as soon as they're done building, they'll go right back to gathering more minerals for you to waste!
 
I think that about covers it. To sum this all up in one word: macro. This is what you should be focusing on right now. Efficiently managing your economy and production without tripping over yourself. Later, you can worry about micro, which covers unit placement, movements, abilities, etc. You really don't need to think about this for now. At this point, you can basically just attack-move to win. Oh, right. There's one thing you should know about micro. With your units selected, press A and then left-click where you want to go. That's called Attack-moving. It's important you do NOT left click to move. If your units run into enemies and you left-click moved, they won't attack or defend themselves. If you A-move, they'll react.
 
If I think of anything else, I'll edit or make another post. But these are all the basics you need to practice. StarCraft is a game of efficiency as much (if not more) as it is one of strategy. You have no idea how many games I lost to utterly pathetic forces simply because I was taking my sweet-ass time and didn't have enough units out. 5 minutes into the game. "Oh, what's that? 6 marines?! I only have three... and they're dead now." There is no coming back from that.
 
At a higher level, you can start worrying about build orders and unit counters and scouting and reading your opponent and army composition and whether you should be going bio or mech. But for now you don't need to worry about any of that shit. If you play Terran, here's your build: Marines, Marauders, Medivacs. Seriously. That's all you need to win in Bronze League. Hell, some people simplify it even more to "pick one unit you like and build that".

 

If you find yourself developing a passion for the game and wanting to improve and climb up to the higher leagues, then are tons of great ressources online. Liquipedia is a pretty comprehensive wiki. You can also pick up pretty good stuff from watching casted pro matches (it's more fun to watch than you realize, I promise!). Then there's youtube channels that specialize in improvement, like dignitasApollo's tutorial series or day[9]'s newbie tuesdays. But for now, just learn how to be fast enough to avoid getting hopelessly crushed in the first few minutes and just try to have fun. 
 
I realize this is kind of a wall of text so it might seem like a lot to take in, but these are the very simple basics and if you stick to them and practice, practice, practice until you can do it all in your sleep, then I promise you before long you'll get the sweet taste of...
 

Edited March 25, 2013 by FLD

[Eleven]

Lol! That post makes me want to play and try whatever you said! I think it's the tone, like, "hey you whoever you are reading this, do this now!"

Edited March 25, 2013 by eleven

[toxicitizen]

Hahaha, glad you enjoyed it. I had way too much fun putting it together.

[Mr. GOH!]

Thanks, FLD. I just need to treat SC2 as a keyboard-focused game rather than a mouse-focused game. I have some bad habits from the singleplayer campaign to unlearn.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, and it's not as hard as you might think.  I almost responded to FLD's post saying that it reinforced how much I suck cause I don't use shortcuts, but then I realized I actually do use shortcuts a lot.  The one thing I'm bad about is expanding to another base.

 

I think the single most takeaway from this though is to build multiple unit-construction buildings if you find yourself queuing up dudes.

[toxicitizen]

Pretty much. If you start playing this way, the single-player campaign kinda turns into a joke. Heart of the Swarm in particular was really on the easy side.

 

If anything is unclear or if you have any questions at all, don't hesitate to ask.

[TheMightyEthan]

It may have been easy but goddamn do I love playing Zerg.

[toxicitizen]

Yeah, it was fun as hell.

 

edit: and to expand on what you said: I'm the same. I know I need to expand at some point but I almost always do it much later than I should. It's why practicing is so important. After a while, you start to find a rhythm and timing that works best for you.

Edited March 25, 2013 by FLD

[Mr. GOH!]

Yeah. I know about the not queuing up and not stockpiling resources, but the only hotkey I ever use is F2. >.>

Edited March 25, 2013 by Mr. GOH!

[toxicitizen]

I don't even know what F2 does. Lol.

[Mr. GOH!]

Selects the entire army. F1 selects idle workers.

 

The only question I have is whetehr there's a way to hotkey the command "select three workers collecting minerals." Or do I have to wrangle them with the mouse?

[TheMightyEthan]

AFAIK you have to wrangle them with the mouse.

[toxicitizen]

Oh, okay. You don't really need that if you set up control groups.

 

And nah, that's one thing you need to use your mouse for. Don't worry about precision, though. You can just do a quick grab. Let's say you need three SCVs and grab 5, you set down three buildings and shift-click them back to your minerals. The two extras won't have anything to build and will just go right back to mining.

 

edit: or you could always hotkey 3 SCVs to a control group and use that. It would always be the same three, though. So if they get destroyed, you'll have to re-add one. I also wouldn't advise using 1-6 for this. You want those for stuff you'll be using the most. But I guess using 8 or 9 could work. You just gotta train yourself to use it well.

Edited March 25, 2013 by FLD

[TheMightyEthan]

Whenever I'm playing Protoss I always hotkey a probe to 0 so that whenever I want to build stuff I just hit 0 and have my little probe.  Don't need more than one since the portals let you build a bunch really fast with just one worker.

[toxicitizen]

Yeah, didn't think to mention it but Protoss are a stupid race for cheaters so you only need to use one probe when shift-queuing actions. It just "calls" the building and the buildings basically "build themselves". So the probe is immediately free to do other stuff, which is why Protoss are often said to be the most noob friendly of all three races. Like I said. Cheating.

Edited March 25, 2013 by FLD

[Mr. GOH!]

Protoss are easy, you say? Sounds like my style.

[toxicitizen]

Yeah, it's usually broken down like this.

 

Terran is the most micro intensive.

Zerg is the most macro intensive.

Protoss is the easiest for beginners.

 

None of this takes into account details like unit/race balance or specific match-ups. But from a purely mechanical standpoint, it's a good way to break it down.

[TheMightyEthan]

Um, I wouldn't say toss are easy for beginners.  They're the slowest to get an army built so it's really easy to get roflstomped 6 minutes into the game.  There are some features that are n00b-friendly though, like the fact that the buildings basically build themselves so you don't have to have workers tied up building them.

[Mr. GOH!]

Question: As a total n00b, what are the cheapest tactics to use?

[toxicitizen]

To be honest, they're my least favorite race, I rarely play them and I know the least about them. But I do often hear that said about them so I assumed there had to be some truth to it.

 

But, like I said, I think it's meant in the mechanical sense. It might take longer to build an army but you also have much less to worry about in the bigger scheme of things. Workers are instantly freed up and you don't need to worry about getting supply blocked as much since your buildings require Pylons to work so you need to build a bunch of them anyway. That right there are two things I can definitely see making a big difference for a complete beginner.