The noobs diary

dardoz

So I finally got the change to install sc2 on my new laptop and played about 15 games today as Terran.

Somehow I got placed in Silver despite losing 4 of my placing matches, the only win being an SUV all-in by my opponent.

Have played about 10 games in Silver today and got raped badly in all of them... kinda depressing. I have never played an RTS before though so it's to be expected I guess.

I've been trying some 3 racks opening over and over trying to get it to work but I'm just plain useless clearly. It doesn't seem to matter whether I push early (probably not nearly early enough) or try macro. Every time I meet my opponent he has twice as much **** as I do and it all ends very quickly.

Lets hope tomorrow is not as depressing.

IRL_Sinister

Haha, man I feel you. When I picked up SC2 in the beta I had no experience at all (although I had played WC3). Learning to macro from literally the bottom up takes time!!

You got unlucky with your placement to be honest, but as far as I'm concerned I believe the best way to learn this game is by playing better opponents -- so you'll eventually get to that level!

Star 2 is all about macro sso just keep practicing that. 3 rax builds are the most solid at your level so definitely keep doing doing that. However, anyone on this forum will tell you the golden rule: always keep producing SCV's and building depots. Learn that first and the rest comes later (and easier).

I'm currently searching for a new apartment so I'm pretty busy these days but hit me up onine for some free coaching and advice.

~sinister.947

Welcome to SC II (:

EDIT: NASL is on this weekend. Check it out. http://www.teamliquid.net/video/streams/NASL.tv

Orizio

I'm Feanor.980 on b.net if you want to practice.

dardoz

Thanks for the encouragement Sinister. I'm actually playing under a mates account as kron1c. I'll see if I can figure out how to add you guys later.

I'll tell you how far I've gotten so far consistently.

Depot on 10
Rax and 2nd depot on 12 for walloff
Then I keep 1 SUV building depots, and the rax guy heads of scouting the map

I think what I usually do then is get 1 or 2 more SUVs, followed by a gas and a Tech add on for the rax

Then a couple of SUVs, and 2 more Rax's. It's not always in exactly the same order, but I have noticed when looking at the scoreboard when I lose, that I generally stay close to my opponents until about then 8-10 minute mark when my macro is obviously letting me down as I don't know what to upgrade etc so I kinda start building random stuff without a plan.

I have seen some feckin mental builds against me though. I played against 1 protoss who hit me with what must have been about 20-30 void rays on about 15 mins, lol. It was crazy!

Actually, really noobie question here. When I scout a protoss, how do I know what buildings they are constructing when they all just look like floating black holes?

Grimebox

If I'm reading this correctly, it sounds like your sporadically building SCV's (not SUV ). You want to be constantly building SCV's to bolster your economy throughout the game. Avoid queueing them in the command center too. Post up a replay if you want more specific advice

dardoz

How do I build SCV's constantly if I don't queue them?

Funky

You want to queue another just as the one building is almost finished. For the moment it might be best to just concentrate on having one building and one queued at all times.

If you wanna see what building is being warped in by protoss you can just click on em. You can loosely tell what they are by the size of the animation too. Smaller ones are pylons/cannons anything bigger you'll need to check.

I'd recommend watching day9's newbie tuesday dailies on mechanics & hotkeys, imo they're the best basics to work on at the start.

ps. Congrats on getting playing but WHY TERRAN WHY??? ;_;

dardoz

ehh, cos I played the single player first so I already knew how to play it somewhat. Tbh, I prefer the protoss units but what I might do is play Terran for a few weeks, then switch to protoss and see which I prefer.

Is it just the standard day 9 dailys I should watch or does he have specific ones for noobs?

Funky

He does some noob specific ones on Tuesday. These 3 in particular should be pretty good I think:

Mechanics #1
Mechanics #2
Hotkeys, APM, Mouse movement

I was only kidding bout the terran thing :P they probably are the best to start with and it's not to hard to get used to playing toss after terran anyway... zerg are the awkward one.

dardoz

Ye, a couple of mates are trying to get me to play zerg, but I don't fancy it much. Cheers for the links Funky!

IRL_Sinister

dardoz wrote: »

How do I build SCV's constantly if I don't queue them?

Put buildings on ctrl groups and learn the hotkeys (s for SCV's).

So, for me, I put my Command Center on 3 and 5 so when I want to build SCVs I press 5 and s.

You can do the same with your army.

dardoz

Well I have been hotkeying my main CC, but I didn't realise you could tap it once without jumping back to it and then make something. I'll give it a lash, cos at the moment I spend so much time clicking on stuff in my base that when my scout probe finds the opponents base, he's dead before I click on him to see anything.

Having said that, I don't think I would recognise a single zerg or protoss building at this point to know what their intentions are, so in that respect it might benefit me to play each race for a bit and then choose my favourite. At the moment, my scouting basically just tells me occasionally what army size they have.

In other news though, I got moved down to bronze thankfully, and I've won a few games now so it's not as frustrating. I abused a tactic that a few silver guys used against me, by basically walling off, making a few marines, then double expanding and going mass battlecruisers (10-15).

Grimebox

Try double-tapping your hotkeys. This will bring the screen to where ever the unit/building is. So you can scout easier by double-tapping 4 to return to your base and double-tap 1 to return to your scouting SCV.

In the lower levels, I think there is only a few game ending structures that you need to look out for. Here's an incomplete list:

Zerg: Spire, expect muta harrass, build 1-2 turrets at each mineral line
Protoss: Dark Shrine (also Twilight Council precedes this in the tech tree), expect DT's, get detection ASAP
Terran: Starport with techlab, expect cloaked banshee's, get detection ASAP

When scouting, even running your SCV into his army isn't so bad if you can see the size and composition of the army. So don't consider it a complete failure if this happens.

And enjoy yourself, I had the most fun with this game getting from bronze to diamond

Dustaz

Jesus dardoz, just wait for the rail to respawn....



I went through a very similar thing as yourself when i started. Id NEVER played an rts before so the idea of macro was competely alien to me. Stick with it, watch Day9 and casters on youtube and play, play, play. Whilst im still bad, I'm a lot better than i was.

The best bit of advice i could give you would be: Dont be afraid to lose just to improve some aspects of your game.

Spend a few games ONLY building units with hotkeys rather than clicks. It will take you longer, but in the long run will imnprove your game 200000%

Spend a few games where regardless of what else you build, you build an scv as one finishes.

**** like that improves your game no end. Oh yeh, competely ignore micro. You dont need to micro at all in bronze/silver/gold. Ever. Learn to not stare at battles and concentrate on macro'ing behind them.

enjoy it

dardoz

Just watched an hour of one of those beginner Dailys, so much stuff to try out, I can't wait to get home. Slightly worrying when I have Christmas exams in a week.

Grimebox

Dustaz wrote: »

...

Spend a few games ONLY building units with hotkeys rather than clicks. It will take you longer, but in the long run will imnprove your game 200000%

...

Definitely do this, but go into the hotkey menu first and pick a pre-set that suits you (or make your own). Once you learn the hotkeys, you can't unlearn them! It's like trying to rewire your brain all over again. I personally use grid as I found it easiest to pick up.

Tenger

Grimebox wrote: »

Definitely do this, but go into the hotkey menu first and pick a pre-set that suits you (or make your own). Once you learn the hotkeys, you can't unlearn them! It's like trying to rewire your brain all over again. I personally use grid as I found it easiest to pick up.

I too use the grid and find it great, my fingers tap what my eyes see.....rather than having to remember each letter for each unit/building. (Blitzkrieg used this system and I've loved it ever since)

I would recommend you watch this video too. While it is not a game winning strategy it will really illustrate to you the importance of building SCV's and supply depots. Once you have than down you have a solid base to learn the rest. (says the eternal bronze leaguer who forgot to being a mouse to his hotel room, a trip to Bestbuy for me!!!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXbSvEKLJl8

dardoz

What's the concept of the grid??

Grimebox

dardoz wrote: »

What's the concept of the grid??

It uses the keys around the wasd area. It directly maps the keys to the boxes at the bottom right of the screen (area you click to build etc). e.g. Q is mapped to the upper left most box, W is mapped to the next one to the right of it, E is the next one after that, A is mapped to the box below Q... as it is below Q on the keyboard. You just have to remember where the units are on the "grid" to quickly build stuff. I hope I explained that properly. It's very handy for playing off race as well. I found it far easier coming from an fps background.

Tenger

Grimebox wrote: »

It uses the keys around the wasd area. It directly maps the keys to the boxes at the bottom right of the screen (area you click to build etc). ....

Yep.

For example, to build out of your-
Barracks; Marine=Q, Marauder=W, Reaper=E, Ghost=R.
Factory; Helion=Q, Tank=W, Thor=E
Starport; Viking=Q, Medivac=W, Raven=E, Banshee=R, Battlecrusier=T

Select an SCV, z z and you place a bunker, z w and you get a refinery, z e gets you a depot, z a is barracks, etc, etc,

As a terran it helps as common abilities are Z (stim, banshee cloak, siege, auto turret),
X covers unsiege, decloak, EMP, vikking ground mode, PDD for Raven's,

dardoz

but that's not really much different to the standard layout... Like everything is close to wasd anyway..

off the top of my head, most of the buttons i press are within the grid layout even on standard...

..so I don't really see the difference

dardoz

Is it just that the grid lets you set out your own custom hotkeys rather than using the preconfigured ones in the standard layout?

Tenger

dardoz wrote: »

Is it just that the grid lets you set out your own custom hotkeys rather than using the preconfigured ones in the standard layout?

No. The grid maps the abilities to the visual layout of the box on the lower right of the screen. The QWER, ASDF, ZXCV keys change ability/usage depending on the unit/building you have selected.

See my edit above.

dardoz

Ye I get it now, certainly an interesting concept.

dardoz

Can anyone tell me what's the best way of taking down a mothership with a bazillion stalkers under it in late game? My mass BC's was annihilated

I had a much better economy but couldn't defeat this style of play yesterday, and I literally didn't know what to do with my money to kill it.

Edit: nevermind, a bit of googling tells me to try mass vikings and a few thors to spank the mothersip

Orizio

dardoz wrote: »

Can anyone tell me what's the best way of taking down a mothership with a bazillion stalkers under it in late game? My mass BC's was annihilated

I had a much better economy but couldn't defeat this style of play yesterday, and I literally didn't know what to do with my money to kill it.

Edit: nevermind, a bit of googling tells me to try mass vikings and a few thors to spank the mothersip

Vikings. Outside of late game TvT when both sides are camping, Battlecruisers are worthless. They are very good late game TvT mind.

As an aside, I'll be on b.net tonight if you (or anyone else) wants to practice. Feanor.980. I'll be on a good bit over christmas as well.

BENJIspendlove

look at you dar, you finally found the good game, took ye long enough

btw, long time no see, how goes etc?

dardoz

Benji my man, what's the story?

Well I'm going to be a daddy in May, so I decided I better give sc2 a go before the chance is gone. Loving it atm, got raped repeatedly in 2v2 last night, jesus I'm brutal at this. The good thing is that I know why I'm brutal at least, mainly a lack of scouting.

Orizio

Its macro dude.

Tenger

dardoz wrote: »

.........The good thing is that I know why I'm brutal at least, mainly a lack of scouting.

Being a crap player myself I would agree with Orizio. Scouting is easy to do, knowing how to react to what you see is a whole different thing. And to react to something you need to have a decent economy set-up in place.

My numbers are probably way off but you must have 20+ SCV's by 5 mins in, then >45 by 10 mins in, 1 expo has to be before 8-10 mins. (forgetting SCV production is very easy to do but will end up with you unable to rebuild troops or expand after 10 mins in)

dardoz

Well I've gotten to the stage where I can easily continuously produce SCV's up to 2 bases having my 2 cc's hotkeyed. My problem is that because my scouting is so bad (most of the time I just shift-click him around every mineral line in the map once he finishes the initial depot) cos I'm not looking at the minimap, then I just notice when he gets attacked and dies.

What happens then is, I focus way too much on getting buildings up and upgrades before getting units cos I'm being greedy and want late game units at the start. Then I notice that I can't spend my money fast enough, so I make more feckin buildings instead of constantly having units coming out as well.

I just need to find the happy medium