How do you improve at starcraft?

docetes

simple enough question. I've looked at videos but can't find too many good articles online

BlitzKrieg

have you looked at this tutorial on youtube for the basics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvQTF5IusTM

It helped me alot.

Also consider altering things to make things easier for you. I changed my hotkeys layout to grid which helped me alot, especially if you have alot of difficulty remembering the hot keys by default.

in grid the hotkeys dont match up via letters (as in D for drone or S for SCV) instead the keys qwerty,asdfg,zxcvb match in a grid formation

like so:

q w e r t y
a s d f g
z x c v b

with the buttons in the lower right of the screen so you just need to feel the key that matches the buttons position (for example most abilities end up on z or x as the ability buttons are always in the bottom left.)

That will help with micro.


But there are alot of things to learn that are pretty much blizzard things.

for example

-grouping

unlike other rts grouping (ctrl + 1,2,3,4 etc) is rather dyanamic as you can group buildings (even multiple buildings particulary powerful with protoss warpgates) so you can control them extensively without needing to click on them, also units its easy to increase the size of armies to a group as you dont need to reselect them all to add new units to the group.

getting better of being able to control your forces on the go and your base without having to go back to it is key to improving.


Also some other quirks of starcraft, the combat is a tad odd in that its usually for most units better to use attack move (a by default, T in grid layout) as your units will automatically form lines to deliver the most firepower or try to circle the opponent to trap them if melee. If you right click to attack most of the time, your force breaks apart as they all try to get a line on the unit you clicked and will ignore any other forces, usually resulting in a clusterf*ck of units doing nothing usefull. Only right click if you need to kill specific units fast (siege tanks, high templers infestors etc) otherwise use attack move and try and bring most of your guns to bare (i.e avoid fighting on ramps or in tight spaces as you will not be able to bring all your forces to attack)


thats all I can say for the moment until you start asking specifics.

NeoSlicerZ

Day9's 132nd cast is pretty good aswell.

http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/3732340/

Then watch some casts of progamer matches, you don't have to copy exactly what they do, but go through the thought process. It helps quite a bit. Macro is probably a bit more important than micro, though I admit my own goes to pot when I need to micro a lot.

The challenges will give you a very good feel for how units stack up in general and also for basic macro and micro.

Dacian

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

Also consider altering things to make things easier for you. I changed my hotkeys layout to grid which helped me alot, especially if you have alot of difficulty remembering the hot keys by default.

in grid the hotkeys dont match up via letters (as in D for drone or S for SCV) instead the keys qwerty,asdfg,zxcvb match in a grid formation

like so:

q w e r t y
a s d f g
z x c v b

with the buttons in the lower right of the screen so you just need to feel the key that matches the buttons position (for example most abilities end up on z or x as the ability buttons are always in the bottom left.)

Didn't realise you could do this with SC2. I remember this system from Blitzkrieg. I loved it, so intuitive, easy to get the hang of.

Gybe

Day9 is looking at lower level games at the moment, his last 2 casts in fact, and just pointing out the common mistakes new players fall into. He generally does provide good advice on how to improve, simple things like taking one aspect of your game to work on until you are happy with it. So this week I will be mostly working on macro!

Alot of this game is down to mechanics so get to know your builds vs each race match up and try and learn their builds so you know whats coming and when! This will take some time but good mechanics make you such a strong player. Watch Trump's stream on teamliquid if you have time, the guy is a pretty slow player (80 APM average) but his mechanics are solid as are his builds, this has gotten him to ~top 30 in the world atm.

Links:
day9 #164
day9 #163
TeamLiquid User Streams
LiquidPedia some decent opening builds for each race here.

seraphimvc

start from the challenges in the single player mode then you will be pretty sorted with the basics.

Kirby

Don't get caught up in APM. Concentrate on build orders and trying to learn which units are a good counter for other units. That will stand you in good stead. Most high Action Per Minute players just care about the e-peen. You see it all the time where they spam hotkeys with no real purpose just to keep their apm up. Pointless. It's easy to spot the true masters from the pretenders when the action gets going.

docetes

Thanks guys I'll have a look at some of day9's stuff

Blinn

Kirby wrote: »

Don't get caught up in APM.

APM isn't everything but there is a baseline minimum APM required to play the game at a high level. The same was true in Brood War, it was just more exaggerated- even basic managing of a few bases would require over 100 APM easily. Don't get obsessed by your APM but remember SC1 and SC2 both reward you for playing faster and more efficiently.

Sod'o swords

I still haven't gotten around to playing SC2 yet, well I've been playing a different Acronym of SC2 a lot, supreme commander 2. Though I've been following this forum with some interest and this is all i can contribute so far.

In my experience the way to become better at RTS games, is by losing. Learn from your mistakes, see how you were beaten and how to counter it or prevent it from happening. By doing that I've gotten to the stage where i only lose matches because my team mates are border line inbred and i don't even have that many hours.

This is a large factor in Supreme commander, because it's on such a larger scale individual unit tactics isn't as important as in StarCraft. So Foresight has more of a role in the game and to improve in both games, is slightly different.

I hope this hasn't been covered several times above and if not, I hope it slightly helps..

zoom!

Go to ladder, play a league game, if you win that's great. But if you lose, look at the replay and watch your mineral count and your macro, micro overall. Look at the battles that took place and how you could have won them. Basically just look for some common mistakes you made.