Starcraft Noobs (strategical elements of SC)

[EscapePlan9]

The purpose of this post is to help some of you noobs better understand the strategical elements in Starcraft.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sZ_6zNwdv1A

This is a highlight reel of four pro-gamers who use the Protoss race.

From 0:00 - 0:44
At the start you just see a closeup of the probes mining. One of the fundamental concepts to understanding the strategical elements of SC is understanding that of having a large economy. This is referred to as macromanagement. With more resources, you can produce more units and take better advantage of the various abilities and upgrades available. This makes it imperative that you simultaneously expand as much as possible (to gather more resources than your opponent) and guard those expansions. You have to balance the two of them so your army isn't so spread out you cannot effectively defend your bases.

For example, think of the game of Risk. A poor strategy is to have a small amount of units spread out across the map. You gain more of an advantage by clumping your units together so you can better defend yourself and gain more resources (for armies) which you then can use to attack your opponent and decrease their resources and production ability.

0:45
There are many different units in Starcraft which all have different properties, advantages and disadvantages. One of these properties is cloaking. Cloaked units can only be observed through specific abilities (i.e. Terran's comsat station or Zerg's ensnare) or specific units (i.e. Protoss' observers, Terran's science vessels, Zerg's overlords).

In this scene we have a few things to consider:
1) Lurkers (the spider-like spiny zerg creatures) are cloakable units. When they burrow underground, they can attack with the advantage of being "cloaked".
2) The Protoss only method of detecting cloaked units is their observer (the faded mechanical eye you see flying around).
3) If the observer is destroyed, the lurkers can deal damage without being damaged themselves.

So here we see a flying zerg unit (a scourge) trying to destroy the lone observer to allow the lurkers to deal some free damage and push back the opposition. The Protoss player wisely manuevers his observer around in circles and focus-fires on it with his dragoon to save his unit. This manuevering of units is referred to as "micromanagement" in the game. Essentially micromanagement is about making the best usage of your resources and units.

Keeping your troops alive as long as possible obviously is very important. However, you need great multi-tasking ability to simultaneously make the best usage of your units (micro) while increasing your economy (macro). This is why the best players tend to average more than 120 actions per minute (APM) - that's at least 2 clicks a second throughout the entire game! They need to in order to constantly expand, produce more units, use their resources as it comes in, defend their expansions, attack their enemy, and make the best usage of their units.

Well that's enough for now. If there's enough interest I may write more. By having a firm grasp on the concepts of micro and macromanagement you already are on the path to having a strong strategical understanding of Starcraft.

If any of you still play Starcraft, my username on battlenet is esc[pd] . You can reach me here, AIM, or occasionally on battlenet. I find it easiest to setup a game by planning it here (respond in this thread) or through AIM. If you're really bad but just want to play for fun, we can do 1v2, or team up with me against computers like a bunch of noobs (lulz). You can also observe me 1v1 someone here or computer or whatever.

[k3nt]

[EscapePlan9]

[Xaston]

[EscapePlan9]

[EscapePlan9]

[DoctorHandles]

[EscapePlan9]

[DoctorHandles]

[EscapePlan9]

[black_knight6]

[EscapePlan9]

[EscapePlan9]

[k3nt]

I thought temps had 200/250 mana, like everything else.

All Starcraft spells are imbalanced if you can use them well.

Come on, people, commit to playing tonight!!!

[EscapePlan9]

I wouldn't say they're imbalanced if every race has their unit/ability that does sick damage and is tough to stop.