EPTPractices matches :
i bought the game, and played with friends out of the ladder, but then it was time to fly in solo so i grabed my machine gun and decided to go through the practices matches.
As i have already played a bit with the starter edition i won 4/5 of my practices matches, because the anti rush system doesn't really protect versus a marine drop in your mineral fields. When i realized that and the fact that the game goes slower i told to myself :
"What are you waiting for ? Even if you go to your placement matches and lose them all what do you risk ? there is no negative points in the ladder so even if you loose at the beginning you're not going to sink or stuff like that !"
Advice :
If you have played the starter edition and know the basics mechanics of the game don't spend to much time doing practice matchs as the anti-rush system and the slower games don't really help you. (But it's great if you discover the game as you can try different Build Order on your own without being bothered by a really fast rush)
Real ladder (Yihaaa) :
And so i jumped into the real ladder. on the five matches i won one game (hell yeah) and so i'm in the bronze league (surprising, isn't it ?).
I've played a bit on solo, but mostly in 2vs2 (with a friend who played WC3 before) and here we are, we went through a lot of trouble during our first games, but now it becomes a bit clearer (we are around 20 games played) :
Problem 1 :
OMG THEY HAVE TOO MANY UNITS !!11!!
(yeah i was like that in my first games)
Solution 1.1 :
it's sounds like an economical problem : more ressources, more troops, and in fact if i look the "ressources" graph at the end of the game i can see that most of the times my opponent is quite higher than i.
there are several way to solve this problem, the first one is to always construct SCV (or probes), taking an expansion if you have the money (and if it's safe).
(sounds obvious but doing it properly is quite difficult to me)
Solution 1.2 :
You can also build more barracks and stuff, don't be shy with only one barrack : if you are harvesting (is it the word ?) too much minerals you can create marines or any other unit you want :
unused ressources are uselees, if you harvest at the same speed than your ennemy but if he keeps using it he's going to have an army way bigger than yours.
Solution 1.3 :
The third origin of this problem is the hardest to solve, let's imagine a scene :
"You are fighting, you don't want to loose this fight, you try to micro a bit (i can't, but well let just imagine) so you keep all your attention on the fight, the clash arrive, you won but now you have only three marines and the second wave arrive..."
Wait what ?! how the f*** did he respawned his whole army ?!
Well, it was (and it is still) one of my biggest mistakes : being focused on the fight and don't produce unit during the fight, by doing this you don't get reinforcement and you accumulate a lot of ressources, and it is totally useless. So to solve this problem you've got to use hotkeys to keep an eye on the fight and produce unit.
(i will continue to had problems and solutions, when i clearly identify them)
rocket speed up the ladders i predict as long as you keep playing ^_^ good luck! once you got your current problems out of the way, likely things you will have to learn is basic micro like stutter step, positioning your units and spreading against aoe.
