Anyone here need advice or tips? Ask me. In the meantime, for newbies, here are the five most important things you should remember online (taken from GameFaqs). They are completely true and if you follow these you will win most of your online games. Newbies should pay extra attention to tip #4.
1. ALWAYS BE BUILDING WORKERS
You need lots of probes/SCVs/drones ("workers") for each base. The
general rule of thumb is to never stop building them. You can never
have enough peons.
Zerg's paradigm is a bit different, but for Protoss/Terran, your
Nexus/CC ("town hall") should always be building a worker. It can be
a bit cumbersome to remember to build workers, so if you have to,
queue up a few workers so that they automatically build one after
another. Those workers should always be put to use, of course - you
can rally them straight to minerals so that they automatically start
mining/gathering once built (just select your town hall and
right-click on a mineral patch).
* E.G. An easy way to continually build workers is to put your town
hall into a control group (I use "2"). With Protoss an example,
when you're in the middle of a battle, you can just hit "2eee" to
start a few more probes from your Nexus. You can in fact hotkey
multiple Nexuses to build peons from all of them.
2. BUILD SUPPLY IN ADVANCE SO YOU ARE NOT EVER WAITING ON SUPPLY
Always build depots/pylons/overlords ("supply") early enough in
advance so that you're not waiting on supply to finish ("supply
blocked") in order to build more units. You should try to never get
the "You must construct additional pylons"-type supply block messages.
* E.G. Generally in early game, you'll want to start building your
next supply when your supply is 3 under its limit. In later game,
you'll want to build supply much earlier or in multiples.
3. KEEP YOUR RESOURCES AS CLOSE TO ZERO AS POSSIBLE
Spend minerals/gas ("resources") that you earn as fast as you can.
Don't let resources pile up (this is called "floating" in some
RTS-speak), because resources in the bank are doing nothing for you --
those resources could have been more zealots, an expansion, etc.
* E.G. Once you have a gateway, make sure it's making zealots whenever
you have enough resources to spare, and if your gateway is building a
zealot and you have even more resources then build a 2nd gateway (or
tech, expand, etc.). It's less important at beginner level what you
do with your resources just as long as you spend them on something.
Resources tend to pile up in particular while you're executing a
battle (e.g. controlling your marines as they take out some zergling),
so get used to the habit of reminding yourself to build unit even in
the middle of battles. SC2's interface makes this easy; you don't
need amazing APM (i.e. keyboard/mouse speed) but rather just need to
reemember to build at all times. Watch your replays and keep an eye
on your resources to see where you tend to fall behind.
A related rule to this is: Don't queue a lot of unts in your
production buildings just to keep your resources close to zero. In
other words, do not queue up 5 battlecruisers in a single starport.
The reason is that when you queue units, this ties up your available
resources even though you're only actively building the first unit in
the queue. If you have enough resources to queue up 5 battlecruisers
in a single starport, then you should instead build 2 more starports
so that you can be building those 5 battlecruisers in parallel. When
watching your replays, check that your production buildings are not
idle (i.e. are always building something), and do not generally have
more than 2 units queued up at any time.
4. AVOID BUILDING A LOT OF STATIC DEFENSE
A standard beginner trend is to build tons of
cannons/bunkers/turrets/spines/spores ("static defense";
i.e. buildings that attack) in your base, because static defense keeps
you safe from attack. However, because static defenses are defensive
and in general don't move, they can't help you attack, which means
that you automatically present less of an offensive threat to your
opponent. If you're playing against the computer, it'll happily send
units at your wall of cannons and get those units killed, so this
seems effective. But when playing against a human, your opponent will
realize that you have little to attack him with since you've been
spending money on defense ("turtling"), and will take over the rest of
the map and starve you out. This means that you may not lose early in
the game, but you will still lose because you've lost the resource
war.
* E.G. Do not incorporate a forge into your early build in order to
make cannons. In fact, pretending that cannons don't exist and
instead learning to build units will help your gameplay in the long
run if you're a beginner.
* E.G. Be careful even about building bunkers. Yes, you can salvage
them for a full refund, but while you have bunkers, that's resources
that's tied up that you could have used to make more barraks, start
an earlier factory, etc.
5. SCOUT EARLY AND OFTEN
Send a worker out to your opponent's base fairly early in the game,
e.g. usually when you are around 8-12 supply (you scout with a worker
because around 8-12 supply, you won't have other units available).
Once your worker is in your opponent's base, keep it alive as long as
possible by having it continue to move around the base.
Scouting is vital for getting an idea on what strategy your opponent
is adopting, since your own strategy is typically defined by what your
opponent is doing. It is also not just a one-time event -- later,
you'll want to send an observer or overlord or other expendable unit
into your opponent's base to see what he's up to, or try sending
another worker in, etc. Even if you're not experienced enough yet to
how exactly to respond to what you see when you scout, you will still
benefit from what you see.
* E.G. I scout with a probe in early game and see that my opponent is
building a forge. This means he is probably making cannons. I will
keep my probe alive long enough to see whether he starts warping in
cannons after his forge is done. If so, then I know he will be
unable to attack me early on, so I can expand early. I should then
scout about a minute afterward to see if he is teching quickly
(e.g. if I see a stargate and fleet beacon, I know he is making
carriers so I need to make some anti-air).
Log in to comment