Starcraft 2 - Read Post #2 for a useful beginner guide

[BlahBlahYouToo]

anyone play sc2 @ 2560x1600 on a 30"?
all the units are ginormous. the command center is about the size of my fist not tightly clenched.
it doesn't feel like the in game resolution scaled to the right size. everything looks like it's at 800x600 (or whatever equiv 16:10 res).

for reference, i came from a 24" @ 1920x1200.

 

[JTsyo]

Think Blizz did that so those with bigger screens wouldn't have the advantage of seeing more of the map.

 

[Aikouka]

What is the best protoss counter to mutalisks if they sending a clump of them at your or your ally's mineral line? Is the only thing to do to Forge/cannon your minerals? I hate having to park a large group of stalkers there since they are needed to push out.

You can always build a cannon if you're just being harassed, but if there's a significant number of Mutalisks (I'd say about 6+), you may want to consider a few cannons.

If you've got the tech for it, you can also consider using Phoenixes as they do bonus damage to Mutalisks and are faster than them.

EDIT:

anyone play sc2 @ 2560x1600 on a 30"?
all the units are ginormous. the command center is about the size of my fist not tightly clenched.
it doesn't feel like the in game resolution scaled to the right size. everything looks like it's at 800x600 (or whatever equiv 16:10 res).

for reference, i came from a 24" @ 1920x1200.

I know what you mean. I play it on a 1920x1200 27" monitor and the game looks huge... oddly enough, it didn't really look huge to me before, but when I started playing again, I was almost surprised :hmm:.

 

[dank69]

anyone play sc2 @ 2560x1600 on a 30"?
all the units are ginormous. the command center is about the size of my fist not tightly clenched.
it doesn't feel like the in game resolution scaled to the right size. everything looks like it's at 800x600 (or whatever equiv 16:10 res).

for reference, i came from a 24" @ 1920x1200.

Use 2560x1440 for the better field of view (16:9)

 

[eLiu]

What is the best protoss counter to mutalisks if they sending a clump of them at your or your ally's mineral line? Is the only thing to do to Forge/cannon your minerals? I hate having to park a large group of stalkers there since they are needed to push out.

This question is pretty hotly contested, lol. My 0.02:

It depends strongly on *how many* mutas there are. If you've let the zerg macro up & he has 30 mutas, throwing down some cannons isn't going to save you. Even a bunch of stalkers sitting in your mineral line won't save you. Mutas are one of those 'critical mass' units. Once zerg has enough of them, zerg can pull down any unit/building very quickly & run away.

Against like 5 or 6 mutas, a cannon or two will do just fine. Unless you suspect that your opponent own't harass you at all (mutas, drops, whatever), having a few cannons in your base won't hurt. Yeah it costs minerals but as you mentioned, that added safety lets you move out & doesn't constrain your army. I'd say it's worth it.

Though for ^^ to be effective, you need to scout actively and be aware of common zerg timings. Like how fast can the zerg get mutas? How fast can zerg *safely* get to mutas? Putting down a cannon won't save you if it's like SURPRISE, 10 mutas in your face! lol On the other hand, if you see the spire going down (or better, see the spire), you can prepare. Anyway, turrets/cannons are my favored way of dealing with light muta harass.

So the question should really be... how do you prevent the zerg who started with like 6 mutas from getting 30+ of them?

The answer to that is aggression. You need to pressure the zerg so much that he never has time to get the expensive mutas & instead is spending on things like roaches/lings to stay alive. Move out early and hit him hard. Attacking has the added benefit of letting you see everything that's going on (i.e., if mutas are even on the drawing board). Keeping the pressure on is an excellent thing to do regardless.

If you leave the zerg alone for too long, he will get a crapload of mutas. If that's going to happen, you have a few options (combinatoins of the following) as far as I can see:
1) phoenixes: not sure how I feel about this, as you will need quite a few phoenixes. If you're comfortable w/using them to pick off mineral lines & lift units in battle, then go for it since they'll help you out. They can also buzz around and snipe overlords, which is great.
2) blink stalkers: in numbers, stalkers can put the hurt on. And blink prevents zerg from doing hit & run.
3) high templar: storm does heavy damage to mutas. Yes they can run but if they're all clumped up, you'll put the hurt on. And across several storms, they'll drop like flies. Just be careful to storm over where the muta's circle is on the ground, not on top of the muta object.
4) Armor or shield upgrades. The muta does like 9/3/1 base damage. With a +1 attack modifies that by +1/+0.3/+0.1 or so. So 1 level of upgrades will hurt the muta's damage potential a lot, as long as you are ahead in upgrades.
5) sentries! Roughly equal numbers of sentries win over roughly equal numbers of mutas (actually I think you can have like 3/4 as many sentries). As long as all the sentries are always under guadian shield. WAY MORE so than armor upgrades, guardian shield murders the muta's damage output. Have these guys around.

Of course, all this needs to be balanced against what the other opponent is doing... and what kind of ground army zerg has. A huge hoard of blink stalkers are of somewhat questionable value when put up against a MMM terran & a muta/speedling zerg, for example.

And if zerg has that big army of mutas, you can't just sit in your base & try to protect yourself from harassment. You'll lose map control & lose the game. Push out, doesn't have to be w/everything. Hit zerg's lightly defended bases. Or use the main army to nail his main base. He'll have to pull the mutas back at some point or try to trade bases with you (mutas aren't quite the best at killing buildings, so this should work out well). Keep in mind that a zerg with like 30 mutas won't have a ton of other units, so exploit this weakness.

As you noted, part of the point of the muta harass is to force the opponent to build a lot of defenses and/or commit army to base defense. If you just sit your units around waiting to push away harassment, you're letting the zerg win.

 

[skace]

So I've been avoiding SC2 because it's such a big investment (SP and MP wise), while I play other games. But I finally started to get into the SP campaign this week and my god this is an incredible campaign. Each mission has a lot of uniqueness to how it plays and each time you get back from a mission your base is slightly different. I'm really enjoying all of the elements they put into a simple RTS game - incredible.

Spent like 2 hours yesterday playing Lost Viking, lol!

 

[dust]

Spent like 2 hours yesterday playing Lost Viking, lol!

I'm trying to get 500,000 for a month.

 

[ravaneli]

I just bought the game and I thought I would read this sticky.

Does anyone agree with his definition of micro and macro? I mean it is not up to him or me or anyone else to decide what these words mean, all we can do is use them right or wrong. But he thread starter is confused. You can do micro with your economy, and do macro with the army. Economy/army has nothing to do with it. It is the level of detail that you get involved into. When u make a decision about where to move or what to shoot with a single unit, or give individual commands to individual units, this is micro. When you build your general strategy, like when to attack, what kind of units to build, what to focus on throughout the game, that's macro. Micro is when u 'zoom in' and macro is when u 'zoom out'.

Who's with me!

 

[bhanson]

I just bought the game and I thought I would read this sticky.

Does anyone agree with his definition of micro and macro? I mean it is not up to him or me or anyone else to decide what these words mean, all we can do is use them right or wrong. But he thread starter is confused. You can do micro with your economy, and do macro with the army. Economy/army has nothing to do with it. It is the level of detail that you get involved into. When u make a decision about where to move or what to shoot with a single unit, or give individual commands to individual units, this is micro. When you build your general strategy, like when to attack, what kind of units to build, what to focus on throughout the game, that's macro. Micro is when u 'zoom in' and macro is when u 'zoom out'.

Who's with me!

This picture makes more sense than your post.

 

[HomerX]

just bought the game and I thought I would read this sticky.

Does anyone agree with his definition of micro and macro? I mean it is not up to him or me or anyone else to decide what these words mean, all we can do is use them right or wrong. But he thread starter is confused. You can do micro with your economy, and do macro with the army. Economy/army has nothing to do with it. It is the level of detail that you get involved into. When u make a decision about where to move or what to shoot with a single unit, or give individual commands to individual units, this is micro. When you build your general strategy, like when to attack, what kind of units to build, what to focus on throughout the game, that's macro. Micro is when u 'zoom in' and macro is when u 'zoom out'.

Who's with me!

yes macro is not only the workers/expansions but also the production buildings and when to build what buildings, spreading creep, using chrono boost etc... balancing worker and unit production etc...
micro is the control of your units in order to make them more effective.. marine spread against banelings, stutter shot, force fields, positioning, drops etc etc....

 

[JTsyo]

I just bought the game and I thought I would read this sticky.

Does anyone agree with his definition of micro and macro? I mean it is not up to him or me or anyone else to decide what these words mean, all we can do is use them right or wrong. But he thread starter is confused. You can do micro with your economy, and do macro with the army. Economy/army has nothing to do with it. It is the level of detail that you get involved into. When u make a decision about where to move or what to shoot with a single unit, or give individual commands to individual units, this is micro. When you build your general strategy, like when to attack, what kind of units to build, what to focus on throughout the game, that's macro. Micro is when u 'zoom in' and macro is when u 'zoom out'.

Who's with me!

While I see what you're saying, in the SC community marco = economy/Production; mirco = combat.

 

[Train]

While I see what you're saying, in the SC community marco = economy/Production; mirco = combat.

IMHO, Micro is a little more than just combat.

Say you have a group of marines standing around. A Carrier rolls in and starts attacking them. If you do nothing, your marines will automatically attack the first target in range, the interceptors. If you focus fire your marines ont he Carrier itself, that's micro.

When you have your spell casters hot keyed, and can turn the tide of a battle with a well placed psionic storm, point defense drone, etc, thats micro. When you focus fire your units to make them most effective. When you move your stalkers right up to a seiged tank to attack instead of having them fire as soon as they are in range, that's micro.

 

[Dumac]

IMHO, Micro is a little more than just combat.

Say you have a group of marines standing around. A Carrier rolls in and starts attacking them. If you do nothing, your marines will automatically attack the first target in range, the interceptors. If you focus fire your marines ont he Carrier itself, that's micro.

When you have your spell casters hot keyed, and can turn the tide of a battle with a well placed psionic storm, point defense drone, etc, thats micro. When you focus fire your units to make them most effective. When you move your stalkers right up to a seiged tank to attack instead of having them fire as soon as they are in range, that's micro.

....that is all combat

 

[Train]

....that is all combat

All micro is combat, but not all combat is micro. Get it?

 

[Dumac]

IMHO, Micro is a little more than just combat.

All micro is combat

Have fun contradicting yourself?

 

[DrunkenSano]

What combat isn't micro? There's awesome micro and bad micro, but it is still micro. Whether or not you have the reflexes and hand-eye coordination to click fast enough, it is still considered part of micro.

 

[HomerX]

en example of non-combat micro is the worker split at the beginning of the game...
so there exists micro outside of combat but it is very rare... another example was the faster mining trick...

-> you control single/small amounts off units in order to increase their effectiveness, which often requires a lot of apm.

 

[Train]

What combat isn't micro?

When you let the units act under their default behavior. You know, like the example I posted above.

"Micro" comes from "micro manage"

 

[Train]

Have fun contradicting yourself?

lol nice try.

 

[DrunkenSano]

When you let the units act under their default behavior. You know, like the example I posted above.

"Micro" comes from "micro manage"

That's just bad micro. All battles require micro-management, how well you micro the battle is up to you and your skill level. Just because you let units auto-attack doesn't mean that the battle isn't micro, it's just that it was bad micro.

 

[Train]

That's just bad micro. All battles require micro-management, how well you micro the battle is up to you and your skill level. Just because you let units auto-attack doesn't mean that the battle isn't micro, it's just that it was bad micro.

Well then that's where we disagree. You say its bad micro, I say it's a lack of micro. This is probably due to people within the SC community only being exposed to the concept of "micro" through the game. Some commentator probably described a lack of micro as bad micro, and the definition of the word was formed for those who have no other frame of reference.

Which is why it's helpful to look at the origin of the word. Again, it comes from "micro management". If your boss at Taco Bell is standing over you telling you every little task to do, he is micro-managing you. If he leaves you alone to do as you please all day, he is NOT micro managing you. Lack of constant management isn't bad micro, it's the absence of micro. bad micro would be him micro-managing you, along with telling you all the wrong things to do.

 

[DrunkenSano]

This game and a RL job have nothing in common. The concept of micro is for this game, it is not the same concept as RL. For this game, when people say micro, it does not have the same meaning as RL micro. In this game, we are competing, in a job you are working, not competing. To win in this game, you do whatever you can to not only win battles, but win them in the most efficient manner. That is why every battle is considered micro, just because you let the units do whatever they want, it is still bad macro because your units took more damage or even died when they didn't have to, or they dealt less damage than they could've.

 

[Train]

This game and a RL job have nothing in common. The concept of micro is for this game, it is not the same concept as RL. For this game, when people say micro, it does not have the same meaning as RL micro. In this game, we are competing, in a job you are working, not competing. To win in this game, you do whatever you can to not only win battles, but win them in the most efficient manner. That is why every battle is considered micro, just because you let the units do whatever they want, it is still bad macro because your units took more damage or even died when they didn't have to, or they dealt less damage than they could've.

You are assuming you have to micro manage every battle. That is not true.

If I have 5 seiged tanks on a hill, and they are wiping out zerglings as they roll in, I dont have to micro-control that.

The reason you can't just say good/bad micro, is because there is a 3rd option: no micro.

For many examples, micro is not needed, and that is not neccessarily bad.

 

[HomerX]

This game and a RL job have nothing in common. The concept of micro is for this game, it is not the same concept as RL. For this game, when people say micro, it does not have the same meaning as RL micro. In this game, we are competing, in a job you are working, not competing. To win in this game, you do whatever you can to not only win battles, but win them in the most efficient manner. That is why every battle is considered micro, just because you let the units do whatever they want, it is still bad macro because your units took more damage or even died when they didn't have to, or they dealt less damage than they could've.

thats wrong...

there is a difference between no micro and bad micro...

trying to split your workers in the beginning of the match and misklicking them so some of them wont be harvesting for a few seconds is bad micro...

if you try to use forcefields in order to block the enemy from attacking your sentries but you are too late and now your forcefields block your own zealots from attacking the zerglings that kill your sentries is BAD micro...

 

[DrunkenSano]

thats wrong...

there is a difference between no micro and bad micro...

trying to split your workers in the beginning of the match and misklicking them so some of them wont be harvesting for a few seconds is bad micro...

if you try to use forcefields in order to block the enemy from attacking your sentries but you are too late and now your forcefields block your own zealots from attacking the zerglings that kill your sentries is BAD micro...

Letting all your marines shoot any target instead of focusing down one target at a time isn't no macro, it's bad micro. Not feedbacking medivacs and letting your high templars just sit in the group because you did not click anything isn't no macro, it's bad micro.

You are assuming you have to micro manage every battle. That is not true.

If I have 5 seiged tanks on a hill, and they are wiping out zerglings as they roll in, I dont have to micro-control that.

The reason you can't just say good/bad micro, is because there is a 3rd option: no micro.

For many examples, micro is not needed, and that is not neccessarily bad.

Staggering your tanks before seiging or building a concave is also considered micro.