Starcraft II

Remove all ads!

I just seem to have an inability to deal with early attacks. Buildings seem too weak and easy to destroy. I wall off my ramp with supply depots, but they just beat one down in no time at all. I just played against a protoss who had a stalker really early, I had a couple of marines ready behind the wall but the stalker battered them. I tried to get a marauder or two, but it was too late then, as my wall got broke before the marauder was finished, then he had a couple of zealots running in too, game over. I don't understand how you deal with early attacks at all.

 

Just like you are doing but you need to be more active. Marines behind a wall takes a lot of effort to break through. Put an SCV at your wall to repair and he will need overwhelming force and if he has that it isnt really an early attack and you are screwed anyways.

 

3 wins on the bounce now. A simple mix of marines, marauders and medivacs seems to work really well, especially a few upgrades from the tech lab. Just need to make sure you start churning them out as early as possible.

joa, do you constantly keep making SCV's, or don't you bother once you reach a certain number? I only ever seem to make about 30-35, and it seems enough - unless you're collecting from 2 mineral areas at the same time.

 

MMM is probably one of the most used tactics on Battlenet, if not the most. 99% of games I play are against Terran, and about 90% of Terrans use it. Luckily, playing agianst it so much has meant that i'm able to smash it down fairly easily by now.

Despite that, if you do it every game you'll probably see 75% or more of your games end as wins, it's a very hard to counter tactic.

 

What are your battle.net names?

 

Terran seems to be viewed as somewhat stronger than the other two races, especially zerg which you really need to be very good to play well. Sadly I prefer zerg and I am not particularly good but oh well. I have an equal win/lose ratio 1v1 in Silver league. Would be nice with a new partner, all teams I am in is with really good players that has placed our teams way too high for me which leads to me feeling like dead weight.

As for SCVs I think you need a few more than that per base but I am no expert. As I play zerg I constantly have to choose between making units or workers with my larvae which is a pain until you have like three bases and an abundance of larvae. A zerg with good finances is something to fear, able to whip out an army in seconds. Lose one? Build another one, instantly. Too bad you dont reach that stage very often unless you are really good which is the reason why zerg is considered the weakest I reckon.

 

I went with Protoss (Zealots are just too cool) and i'm loving them

 

I dunno about Zerg being the worst - they can bang out a whole bunch of zerglings before their opponent is even off their feet.

 

Zerg are all about micromanagement. Without Queens, they're nothing.

 

That's definitely true. In fact, all three races have a means of boosting production, and if you aren't using those abilities as much as possible, you'll lose. Zergs have the queen that spawn additional larvae, protoss have chrono boost that halves production time, and terrans have Mules that harvest 30 minerals per pop as opposed to 5. You have to use those abilities as much as possible in the early game or you're done.

Regarding SCVs, I make nothing BUT SCVs for quite a while. I build SVCs and only harvest minerals (I don't need no stinkin' vespene early on), and all of my SCVs go on mineral gathering detail until I'm two away from my unit limit (I think it's 9/11 units). That SCV builds a supply depot, and my 10th SCV is built while the supply depot is under construction, but by the time construction of the 11th SVC is finsihed, I have a supply depot, which raises my unit limit to 19.

While the 12th SCV is being built, I take the SCV that just finished my first supply depot, and have him construct a barracks, and once I finish that, I try to always have one SCV and one marine in the production queue. When I get up to about 15 units, I build a refinery, and when I get to 17 units I build another supply depot. After that, it's an orbital command center for Mules.

At this point you should have enough SCVs that you can dedicate one to building things exclusively, and a bunker immediately behind your supply depots filled with marines is a very tough nut to crack.

At this point you need to make a decision as to what type of force you're going to build. If you're more of a vehicle kind of guy, you'll need a factory and/or starport. If you prefer infantry, you're going to need at least two, and probably three barracks.

Zerg is tough, because all of their units are spawned at the hatchery, and every unit you build in the early going is one less drone you get for resource gathering. I don't play Zerg, but I know a lot of people feel it is necessary to use one of your early drones on making a second hatchery, just to get more larvae.

As far as total SCVs go, I'd say 30-35 is definitely adequate, and perhaps even overkill (if you're talking about your first base - if you are running two bases, you'll probably need more than 30-35). You always start with 8 mineral patches and two geysers. Assuming you want two SCVs per mineral patch, and 3 SCVs per geyser, that's 22. With 30 workers would give you three SCVs per mineral patch, but I don't think your SCVs can gather minerals quickly enough to make 3 per patch effective. Maybe going for 2.5 per patch and getting 26 SCVs would be the most I'd consider using. By the time you get to 22 SCVs you should have an orbital command, and you can start spamming mules.

EDIT: And don't forget that your SCVs/drones/probes can be used to attack enemy units! While not overly desirable, you can select all of your workers to attack an early zerling rush and you'll probably survive.

 

Chrono Boost is win

I wish I could use it on allies buildings in 2v2, though.

 

You need three workers to harvest a crystal to the fullest according to a loading screen tooltip.

And yes, a zerg can get out a few units faster than anyone and if you catch your opponents with his pants down you will win or cripple him severly but by getting those early units you have crippled yourself and made it almost impossible to utilize the strength of zerg which is numbers. You need to expand early (which I suck at) and get those larvae coming or you will get beat. If you fail the early rush you will be so far behind that you might as well quit, almost as far back as if your rush had semi-succeeded.

 

Finished the campaign last night, and I have to say I was rather surprised that there really weren't any last-minute plot twists. Everything happened pretty much exactly as I thought it would. I don't want to spoiler anything, but I really thought something would turn out unlike you'd expect, and I'm left wondering what they are going to do with the zerg campaign now.

 

Yeah, I was somewhat disapointed as well but then again the exact opposite result was almost as expected. Zeratul's visions kinda forced what happened to happen though or else everything is screwed.

As for my MP, and I must tell you Aldeth that it is very fun in reasonable doses is currently going way too good. Just got five straight wins in silver which if it continues might lead to me being promoted which I seriously do not want to. Just using hotkeys for different groups and buildings makes a world of difference in your game.

 

I did notice that tip, but here's the issue I have with such a strategy. If it takes you more than 10-15 minutes to play a MP game, then gas, and not minerals are the limiting factor in production. Early on, yes, you need minerals pretty much exclusively, with little or no gas required. (Especially if you're like me and play the terran - I build nothing but SCVs, marines, and supply depots early on, and what all those things have in common is no gas component required.) Furhtermore, most units in the game require more crystals than gas to produce.

But consider this, the time it takes an SCV to make a round trip gathering gas, and a round trip gathing minerals is nearly identical. (For minerals, they spend a couple of seconds at the mineral pile, and for gas they enter the refinery for a couple of seconds. Add in the fact that you only get 4 vespene per trip, but 5 minerals per trip. So, once you are at "full production", you are getting the following per round trip:

2 geysers * 3 SVCs * 4 vespene = 24 gas
8 mineral piles * 3 SCVs * 5 minerals = 120 crystals

That's exactly a 5:1 ratio between minerals and gas. While I will concede that you certainly need more crystals than gas, you don't need that much more. Mineral collection outpaces gas extraction by such a wide margin that you quickly find yourself with a greater demand for gas than minerals. With 2 SCVs per pile it's about a 3:1 ratio, which is probably a more realistic goal to shoot for. The only reason I prioritize minerals over gas early is I need no vespene at all for my early production.

The main issue is research paths. Those things are vespene intensive expenditures, typically requiring as much vespene as minerals. Upgrades are also expensive gas-wise. The only way I can see you needing 5 times as many minerals as gas is if you build a force consisting of marines, marauders, seige tanks and medics. The marines and marauders require no gas, and both seige tanks and medics require three times as much minerals as gas.

I had a bit of a different interpretation. I better spoiler this though, just in case:

Spoiler

Here's my thinking - while Zeratul was very clear about needing Kerrigan alive to prevent the hybrids from destroying everything, he was very unspecific about why and how they needed her alive. Is it not at least possible that she needed to remain in control of the Swarm to defeat the hybrids? Is it not at least plausible that making her human again was tantamount to killing her?

Things that I wonder about that probably will not be answered in the expansion pack(s):

1. Valerian obviously had every intention of double crossing Raynor. Once he finds out that Tychus is dead, and Kerrigan isn't, won't he try and to kill both of them before they can return to the ship? Your list of resources to prevent such is rather thin. By the sounds of things, you have one battle cruiser, the Hyperion, commanded by Horner, and not much else. The rest of the forces at Char are Dominion, lead by Genreal Warfield, who is ostensibly still loyal to Valerian. They could shoot the Hyperion from the sky, which means Raynor and Kerrigan would be SOL.

2. The Dominion is in open revolt against Arcturus, but not Valerian. By destroying the Queen of Blades, and possibly killing Raynor to boot, would he not be viewed as a conquering hero upon his return? Couldn't he take control of the Dominion easily at this point? Wouldn't the Dominion still remain the dominant terran force? Wasn't 90% of the terran campaign focused on stopping exactly that from happening?

However, without any Terran missions left, it seems unlikely that we'll get clear answers to these things.

Questions that I think will be answered in the expansion packs:

1. Who leads the zerg now? AFAIK, there is no Overmind. Now that Kerrigan is human once again, she isn't in charge of the Zerg anymore. From SC1, we saw that even the loss of a cerebrate was enough to have a huge population of Zerg run amok once they were directionless. It would appear that would now be true of the entire Swarm. There will have to be some yet-to-be-introduced character that takes over this job.

2. With the Terrans, and I suppose specifically the Dominion in control of this Zerg pwning artificact, how are the Zerg even a playable race at this point. The Protoss in the past have shown no compunction about incinerating entire planets to wipe out Zerg infestations, and now it appears that Terrans have a similar ability. While I have no idea if the artifact destroyed all the Zerg on Char when it was activated, it certainly seemed like it was capable of destroying a significant area around the artifact.

3. It seems like a logical continuation of this story would be for hybrids to start gaining in power, with Kerrigan eventually stopping them. So, are Hybrids going to be a playable race? Now that we finished the Terran missions, how are we going to have Kerrigan do this?

Hopefully, we won't have to wait too long for the expansion pack(s). If they decide to release the game as a trilogy, that would be disappointing. It seems like the development of subsequent campaigns would be easier compared to what they've done up to this point. You already have all the units for all the other races, and you already have battlenet up and running.

 

You can never have too many minerals, I acknowladge that you get vastly more minerals than gas but just use it to build zerglings/zealots/marines and are marauders completely gasfree? That is sick, terran needs to be balanced.

As for the story, who knows but you did see how she looked in the end I think the counter lies in what the overmind did to her and I think Raynor only gave her her own mind back. She is still a hybrid, dunno how to spoiler wrap so I tried to be circumspect.

 

Marauders are gas free, but they cost 100 minerals whereas marines cost just 50. Medics are firebats are both 75 minerals and 25 gas.

To use spoiler tags type

Spoiler

and then to end it put the / in front of the word spoiler.

 

Spoiler

Other than having dread-locks in her hair (and it still being black) Kerrigan looked pretty damn human to me. No wings, no strikingly zerg characteristics, or anything else like that. If Raynor gave her her mind back, and she doesn't look zerg at all, I think it is fair to say she isn't still the leader of the zerg.

That said, I concede that she may have retained some of her zerg powers. However, since the terran campaign in "done" it does leave a lot of questions about how she will be incorporated into the expansion packs (as we know she will).

 

Marauders cost 25 gas. At least in mp, and I'm pretty sure they do in SP as well, but maybe not.

Spoiler

Both Kerrigan's hair and skin are distinctively nonhuman, and we already know that the zerg campaign will have the player taking the role of Kerrigan

 

Spoiler

Thats what I saw as well, she is still a zerg/human hybrid she just got her original mind back and probably lost some of her powers. Read some speculation elsewhere and I am fairly convinced that the zerg campaign will be about taking control of the swarm as Kerrigan.