Improve Your Skills on StarCraft

Starcraft is an older game with a few basic strategies that work well against newbies (new players) but require no skills and thus tend to fail against seasoned players. This is a guide on how to find your own unique strategy and hone your skills.

Steps

  1. Always pick a race that suits you best.
    • Terran is the most mechanically demanding race, and they are best for slowly pushing and strong defense and walling-off. Terrans are generally the most inflexible in their build, and they have medium unit cost.
    • Protoss is generally regarded as the easiest to learn, with a balance of mechanics and strategy. Their units are generally more powerful but also more expensive. They have a medium level of army mobility and map control.
    • Zerg is the most strategically heavy race, and therefore is more difficult for newcomers. They have a highly flexible economic structure with a need for high map control and many expansions. Their units are generally weaker but less expensive.
  2. Build a lot of scv's/drones/probes and spread a few across the map so in case you are attacked you can build a new base

Strategy

  1. Consider what resources you have to work with.
  2. Scout the enemy early and constantly. Always try to know what their plan is.
  3. Make a plan you can change later. Victory favors the flexible.
  4. Plan your defenses if you plan to have any at all, just in case your opponent rushes.
  5. Formulate a plan based on the map you're playing on. For example, rushing is not possible on an island map, so plan for something else, such as air attacks or drops, instead.
  6. Your strategy should reflect the expected skill level of your opponent. Trying to build Battle Cruisers when clearly you are dealing with an expert is a sure way to lose.
  7. Plan around the amount of time you are likely to be given to prepare for an attack or defense. For example, a focus on mineral production and low buildings (Spawning Pool and Hydralisk Den for Zerg) is absolutely needed, as the point is to overwhelm your enemy with a quick, decisive blow.

Training

  1. It is not good to train on only one type of map. A good Starcraft player must be able to play many different maps many different ways.
  2. A good way to get better is play on IcCup. IcCup is a ladder and has games of players of similar skill level. For example, you will know what rank the other player is (Olympic, A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D-). A good idea is to be familiar with the maps used on IcCup. They can be found on the website.
  3. Be familiar with basic out-of-the-box maps from Starcraft as they are enough of a challenge to keep a player from becoming rusty for a time. The most popular and representative maps are:
    • In-box/slightly modified maps
      • Challenger
      • Big Game Hunters
      • The Hunters
      • The Lost Temple
      • Sherwood Forest
      • Dark Continent
      • Python
    • In-box campaigns
      • Try the original campaigns in Starcraft to keep your improvisation skills up and in top shape.
      • Try the other campaigns boxed with the game (under campaigns).
    • Popular online maps
      • Zero Clutter
      • Money Money (Fast money)
    • Popular "Low Money" Maps
      • Python
      • Blue Storm
      • Lost Temple
      • Andromeda
      • Othello
      • Colosseum
    • Popular Use Map Settings (UMS) maps
      • Bunker Wars
      • Evolves
      • Marine Special Forces
      • Bound Maps (Fast Explosion running maps; requires high amount of skill.)
      • Team Defense Maps (Sunken Defense, Cannon Defense, etc.)
      • Golem Madness (Less common, but classic. Many other "Madness" types exist.)
      • Sniper (bald, with locks or not.)

Learning to Do with What You Have

  1. Scout your surroundings for vulnerable terrain (e.g. defense below a hill is bad).
  2. Be aware of how much time you are likely to be given to prepare. A completely different strategy is needed for a rush game than a no-rush 15 minute game.
  3. The skill level(s) of your opponent(s) determines which attack(s) will be successful. Attacking a pro with 20 marines is not advisable, for instance, while it may work perfectly well when facing a less experienced player.
  4. Use your species' advantages and hide its weaknesses.

Quick overview of the species

  1. Terran
    •  :Advantages:
      • All units are ranged (even Firebat has a range of 2)
      • Bunkers give units longer range and more defense
      • No restriction on where to build buildings
      • Mobile buildings
      • Well-priced units
      • Some units have personal Cloaking
      • Lockdown: disables mechanical units
      • Irradiate: targets biological units
      • Nuking
      • Ability to create a very strong defense, strong walls and tank lines
      • Comsat Stations can easily find cloaked units
      • Ability to mine the map
      • Less need for expansions
    •  :Weaknesses:
      • Mechanically demanding-- requires high APM
      • All units are ranged, rendering them vulnerable to Dark Swarm
      • Mobile detector (Science Vessel) is vulnerable and late in the tech ladder
      • Buildings burn to the ground when health is in red zone
  2. Zerg
    •  :Advantages:
      • "Outnumber and Overwhelm" game focus: cheap, many units
      • Fastest early game rush
      • Parallel production of units
      • Almost all units come from a single source (larvae)
      • Versatile
      • Lots of mobile detection from Overlords
      • Burrowing
      • Plague
      • Dark swarm: Protects your units from ranged attacks
      • All units are biological, and thus cannot be locked down
      • All units and buildings slowly heal
    •  :Weaknesses:
      • Strategically very demanding, resource management vastly different from the other two races.
      • Units generally weaker individually
      • Requirement for many expansions
      • Must build buildings on creep
      • Must sacrifice workers for buildings
      • All units are biological, so all are affected by Maelstrom and irradiate.
  3. Protoss
    •  :Advantages:
      • Strong units
      • Balance of mechanics and strategy
      • Units have shields and armor
      • Strong air and ground
      • Permanently cloaked unit: Dark Templar
      • Psionic storm
      • Recall
      • Maelstrom
      • Mind control
      • Buildings build by themselves
    •  :Weaknesses:
      • Must build buildings inside Pylon grid
      • Most expensive race
      • EMP shockwave will reduce all shields to zero
      • Units take up lots of control points.

Know Your Map

  1. Look for your enemy first.
  2. Scout for resources.
  3. Explore the map terrain.
  4. Work with your terrain, not against it.
  5. Keep track of your enemy (one eye on them, one eye on your base).
  6. Try to control the resources of the map as resources can determine the victor.

Micromanagement (Micro) and Tricks

  1. Know the behavior of your basic units. For example, know that a typical attack unit will go after a target that has attacked them (excluding workers and units incapable of attacking a target).
  2. Learn the response time of your units, both your major species and the ones you could face. An amazing [trick] pioneered by (name) basically used the fact that Lurkers can only kill what their spines touch, and that Marines/Lurkers attack times, if known, can be exploited.
  3. Use flanking in your fights. It basically means you put about a half of your army on the frontline and defend with it, and the other force away from the base, able to strike the backlines of enemy's attacking army. This is helpful, because your units (especially those with tough pathfinding, like Dragoons) don't have to dance around at the backlines because they don't have enough room to maneuver. It also doesn't let your enemies escape from the battle. Speed upgrades are helpful in doing this (Zealots, Zerglings), and if you are Zerg, you can burrow your units on the flank.
  4. If a unit is attacked, consider retreating it to the back lines and coming back when the attack is carried to another unit.
  5. Don't lose your forces if your attack can't be successful. It's good to send Dragoons to harass your Terran enemy by blocking any SCV scouting attempts or Vulture mine harassing attempts, but it becomes foolish to let those Dragoons die on mines or after Tanks get their powerful Siege upgrade. If you lose your force without accomplishing anything (for example, slowing down his macro by smashing his Supply Depots/Pylons/Overlords or killing a fair share of his own units), the enemy can use his victorious force to block you or even kill you.

Simple Microing

  1. Attack carriers one at a time because your units will tend to hit Interceptors without your guidance.
  2. If you have a spell you can cast, do it -- not only will it damage or confuse units, it "kills" fake units (hallucinations).
  3. ALWAYS use your hot-keys! Hot-keying units speeds up their deployment and makes them available at a moment's notice if you need them. The Space Bar centers the last unit that had a transmission, A is attack, H is hold position, S is stop, etc.
  4. Attack en mass whenever possible because it is harder to kill many that are attacking at once than few that attack in spurts, hence the importance of hot-keys (ctrl 0-9 brings up ten separate groups of 12; usually plenty).
  5. Use any parasited unit to scout or attack, but keep them away from your base as the enemy can see everything they do. If you are playing Terran, use restore to remove the parasite.
  6. As with real warfare, you should attack your enemy on multiple fronts, or at least make your enemy unsure as to where you will be attacking from. For example, you can use parasited units to stage a fake smaller attack while another army moves in on another base.
  7. Coordinate your units such that strong, slow, or low-range units are in front and fast, weak, long-range, or spell units are in back (spell units are better than gold, so protect them!).
  8. Use a single unit to draw other units toward your army rather than sending the whole thing to them. The defender usually has an advantage.
  9. Use hold position, rather than stop, as opponents can lead your units astray.
  10. Never ever just move into dark or unknown areas. Always patrol or attack into such places as enemies may be lurking in the darkness.
  11. Use spells whenever possible. Learn their hot-keys to use them quickly and stack different spells on top of each other, but remember some spells only need to be used once. For example, EMP and Lockdown are great against Protoss, but two defensive matrices on a unit still adds the same amount of hit points as on the selected unit.

Making Good Use of StarEdit

  1. Use an unconventional StarEdit-like program to test maps, as StarEdit out-of-the-box is quite limited in what it can do.
  2. Experiment with triggers, values, and placements of doodads/resources, etc. to get a feel for what they affect in the game.
  3. Part of your strategy should include:
    • How many miners are optimal to ensure sufficient resources.
    • Learn the optimal placement for buildings (Command Center and Refinery etc.).
    • Examine the triggers of a map if it is usually played as Use Map Settings (UMS) to determine a strategy beforehand.

Timing and Atmosphere

  1. Time and record your games to see what the enemy did and how you could improve.
  2. Keep music/sound at a comfortable level; a volume too high or too low can be distracting.
  3. Take regular breaks every hour or so for at least 15 minutes each. Starcraft is fun, but too much can poison your ability to follow your strategy or adapt to the map/game.
  4. Talk to your allies through ally chat.

How to Set Ally Chat (AC)

  1. In game, click the ((( | ))) like icon on the bottom left corner of your screen.
  2. On the Ally Chat screen, check "to my allies" to use ally chat. To talk to everyone, check "to everyone".
  3. While on Ally Chat hold the shift key and press enter to bring up the "say to all"

Diplomacy

  1. Try to make at least as many friends as you do enemies. A tactic is usually more effective in teams.
  2. Especially in free for all (FFA) games, know when the attacking is going on and try to distract your opponent(s) because it may be a good time to set your plan in action while they are away from their base.
  3. Never ever send your entire army away from your base unless absolutely necessary. The same tricks you can exploit on your opponent will most likely be tried on you at some point.
  4. If you are alone or outnumbered, continue to be civil because it may be necessary to negotiate a truce if you are losing.

Protecting against Being Back-stabbed

Inevitably everyone gets back-stabbed at least once and a lot of times, it is hard to tell who will or won't back-stab you at that critical moment. Here are a few simple things you can do to better your odds of creating a winning strategy for dealing with backstabbers.

  1. Watch your allies closely and watch out for these signs:
    • Overkill as far as defense and/or offense (an unreasonably large force).
    • Keeps to themselves (backstabbers tend to be very quiet or unresponsive).
    • High loss-to-win record (many backstabbers lose after they back-stab, as their allies generally defeat them).
    • They build unusually close to you.
    • Their forces move toward you during times of peace.
    • Objectives seem to be or are complete, yet victory does not occur (sure sign).
  2. If you spot more than a few of these signs, you are most likely going to get back-stabbed. A simple way of determining if an ally is backstabbing you before they reach your base is to leave a worker near enough to them that if they un-ally you, it will be attacked. The best defense against a back-stab is to build an alternate base, keep your army close, and keep your access to the Diplomacy window (shaking hands in lower left corner) at a state of readiness that allows you to act immediately. The faster you act to such aggression, the more likely it is that you can win.
  3. Ask for assistance from any remaining allies, as most people are willing to assist an ally in harm's way from backstabbers.
  4. If you need to, keep an "enemies list" to avoid being an ally with the backstabber ever again. (Many backstabbers have numerous aliases, unfortunately.)
  5. As a last resort, you can make a preemptive strike against a suspected backstabber. Generally, this is frowned upon, as the first to back-stab is you. If it is absolutely necessary, fight with your full power not to defeat the player, but render them harmless, as to avoid killing an innocent if they indeed are not considering backstabbing.
  6. Do not, under any circumstance, fight fire with fire. (Carriers vs. Carriers, etc.) Fight fire with water instead. Use units that most effectively neutralize the attacking force beforehand (best to keep a stock handy).
    • For high units like Scouts, use a mix of Scouts and Corsairs to maximize attack and splash damage, for example.
    • Use units that cannot be attacked or weakly so whenever possible (e.g. air vs tanks).

Warnings

  • Do not forget to keep your plan secret; forgetting to use ally chat is a common mistake, usually resulting in the loss of the game.
  • Keep your log-in password(s) and CD-key secret. Your rank and reputation can be compromised if someone gains control of your account. (They could also change the password permanently, blocking you from its use.)
  • Starcraft, at current, can crash in Windows XP which results in your screen settings changed to 256 colors with minimum screen resolution. There is a rather large (several megabytes) patch available to correct this, however.

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

You may like

Retrieved from "https://kipkis.com/index.php?title=Improve_Your_Skills_on_StarCraft&oldid=288091"