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Tricks of the Trade
There are many tactics, techniques, and tricks in Starcraft, and more are known after every year; this potential for ingenuity is one of the aspects of SC that makes it "live". The point of this thread is not to look at the latest flashy trick from Boxer or Nal_Ra, but rather, to look at the little techniques that have become standard play for gamers everywhere, a useful part of the arsenal, and some that might even have altered the way the game is played.
What I'm talking about here are things that Blizzard probably didn't intend, and that sometimes may not be "realistic" to the game world, but that attempt to utilize the game mechanics to the advantage of the user.
I am NOT talking about the glitches that have or should be banned, such as flying templar/scv etc.
Share your thoughts, insights, and experiences with these.
All
- Worker Patrol: Useful for scouting, by selecting a worker at the same time as a standard fighting unit (zealot, zergling, marine) you can issue a patrol command and it will continuously travel between two points.
- Worker Clip-Hop: Used to hop through minerals by having 2+ workers mine a single crystal and then "stop"ping them as they start while clicking on the destination. One will pass through the minerals.
- Speed Drop: Clicking the wireframes as the ferrying units move rather than using the "unload all" command, resulting in both quicker unload and a spread that can reduce splash damage/psi-storm, etc.
- Offensive Gas: Scouting early with a worker and building a Refinery, Assimilator, or Extractor on their geyser before they have had a chance to establish. Can delay teching.
- Stacked Workers: Utilizing the workers clipping capacity while mining/going to mine to have a normally impossible amount of melee attacks leveled on a single target instantly.
- Worker Drill/Run: Similarly abusing the clipping to either get through encircling enemies (scouting workers) or to break a blockade (ramp or bridge) by "stopping" and forcing the melee units into confusion.
- Self-Splash: attacking your own units with splash damage to eliminate an undetected enemy nearby. Most common examples are Siege Tanks shooting Medics on Lurkers (Xellos - Yellow, for example), and Archons attacking zealots vs. lurkers.
Terran
- Manner Depot: Same as manner pylon, but with a depot.
- Float-Scouting: Hovering the hardy Terran buildings to extend sightrange for the tanks and to scout up hills.
- Float-Hiding: Hovering a structure over units/turrets to prevent their being clicked on.
- Mine-Push: Laying mines in such a way as to cause the vultures to "clip" through an obstruction. This is used both vs. blockading units (goons vs. vulture rush) and, occasionally, to pass through a blockading structure (as in a famous play by Boxer).
- Defensive Irradiate: Casting irradiate on your own science vessels and then patrolling them over enemy units (usually drones or zerglings) to kill them.
- Marine vs Lurker Dance: consists of sending a few lead marines on a goose chase around lurkers while his buddies kill it. In smaller numbers, the "spiral" method may be used, where the marine circles the lurker and avoids everything. With larger groups, the quicker run-by technique is used, getting behind them and luring their fire away while the large group kills them quickly.
- StimBunker: Stimpacking the marines before putting them into the bunker will increase the Bunker's rate of fire for the stim duration.
Zerg
- Drone Health-Boost: The Drone can recover HP by morphing into a structure and then cancelling.
- Devil-Drone: See "Devil-Probe"
- Overlord Glave-Sponge: Bring Overlords for those big Mutalisk battles; much of the Mutalisk splash will hit the ovies instead of the mutalisks.
- Mutalisk hit'n'run: Stack mutalisks tightly together ontop another unit/mineralpatch, then pull them back instantly after attacking to keep them from spreading out.
- Drone-Trick: Building a temporary structure in order to free up the extra point of psi from losing a drone -- and then cancelling the structure.
- Hold-Lurker: A cool move that actually does fit into the game mechanics; it seems right in character for a Lurker to maximize an ambush. The Zerg selects a second unit (overlord) at the same time as the burrowed lurkers to "hold position", which prevents the Lurkers from attacking until the owner commands them to.
Protoss
- Devil-Probe: Utilizing the fact that Probes (and Drones) have more range than SCVs to pick off an SCV, stopping a very short distance (around 2 matrixes) away from the SCV and then retreating as soon as the Probe attacks.
- Zealot Bomb: Dropping Zealots on top of tanks during the Terran push. Crucial tactic in PvT.
- Scarab Mineral Penetration: Useful for overcoming that troublesome Reaver/Scarab AI, position (drop) the Reaver as near the minerals as possible facing towards the target. When projected, the Scarab may launch midway through the minerals and then clip to continue to its target.
- Carrier Hit & Run: Focus fire on a unit and then, as the interceptors are ejected, retreat. ALthough the Carrier leaves range, several volleys may be fired; this makes the carrier the only unit that can attack while retreating.
- Manner Pylon: On certain maps, building a pylon in the opponent's mineral line to trap workers and reduce his early-game income. A second rendition of this technique is to build a pylon near Terran factories (delaying the machine shop) or to obstruct their wall-in.
- Proxy-tech: Building gateways, reaver tech, or templar tech in an unexpected place unlikely to be scouted. Can serve either to surprise the opponent with tech they were unaware of, or to hasten a rush.
- Drop Mine-detection: Quickly loading/unloading a unit (often Dark Templar) in the enemy base, checking to see if mines will show themselves, without sacrificing the unit dropped.
- Dragoon Dancing: Executing the commands of attack-move-attack in such a way as to be moving during the cooldowns without reducing the rate of fire. Useful both for killing SCVs and maximizing damage vs. melee units.
- Mine Harvesting: Using 3+ dragoons to destroy mines without detection. A lead goon will take a few steps towards a suspected landmine and then pull back as it pops up, providing the split second needed for his two buddies to destroy it.
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yeah i think everyone knows this, but not how to execute them or WHY they should execute them. i play zerg and hold lurker is probably the greatest upside
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On August 23 2005 13:01 tKd_ wrote:
yeah i think everyone knows this, but not how to execute them or WHY they should execute them. i play zerg and hold lurker is probably the greatest upside
Yeah, I think this will only provide "new" ideas to some of the more... er... novice gamers here, but many are deserving of further examination. For example, when/is offensive gassing worthwhile? What situations favor Manner Pylon? How shoudl someone counter these "tricks"?
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Drop-mine detection trick should be under the all category, and allied mines for terran should be added.
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On August 23 2005 13:35 nortorius wrote:
Drop-mine detection trick should be under the all category, and allied mines for terran should be added.
Allied mines is considered an exploit most places, however, so I don't think it really applies.
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On August 23 2005 13:35 nortorius wrote:
Drop-mine detection trick should be under the all category, and allied mines for terran should be added.
I put Dropmine under Protoss because while it is theoretically possible for all races, I have never seen it used in anything other than PvT.
Allied mines is both insensible and generally illegal, useful mainly for pubbies/bgh, imho. Not a valuable part of the Terran repertoire.
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is awesome31417 Posts
Building Terran building to see if there are holding lurkers 
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I believe if allied mines is considered an exploit, than hold lurkers should be too. Just my opinion though 
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Terrans
Having two Science Vessels, one casting Irradiate on the other as both hover back and forth the opponent's mineral line, killing workers.
With one Science Vessel, casting Defensive Matrix AND Irradiate on an opponent's worker, which will kill nearby workers but not itself.
SHIFT + 1 to add selected units to Group 1.
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On August 23 2005 12:58 ShadowMaster wrote:Tricks of the Trade.... - Drop Mine-detection: Quickly loading/unloading a unit (often Dark Templar) in the enemy base, checking to see if mines will show themselves, without sacrificing the unit dropped.
- Dragoon Dancing: Executing the commands of attack-move-attack in such a way as to be moving during the cooldowns without reducing the rate of fire. Useful both for killing SCVs and maximizing damage vs. melee units.
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I'm not certain but I think sometimes using Drop Mine-detection u can achieve the mine to detonate without taking any damage.
Dragoon dancing has nothing to do with this topic, it's just a regular hit&run tacic.
Maybe more of consideration in TvT goliath stop mine killing, or gol+dropship unloading so that slow projectiles won't hit u.
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On August 23 2005 14:12 Prose wrote:
Terrans
With one Science Vessel, casting Defensive Matrix AND Irradiate on an opponent's worker, which will kill nearby workers but not itself.
Does it work that way? I had always thought that Defensive Matrix did not reduce damage from Irradiate, just as Protoss shields do not.
SHIFT + 1 to add selected units to Group 1.
lol
Thanks
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On August 23 2005 14:17 LastWish wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2005 12:58 ShadowMaster wrote:Tricks of the Trade.... - Drop Mine-detection: Quickly loading/unloading a unit (often Dark Templar) in the enemy base, checking to see if mines will show themselves, without sacrificing the unit dropped.
- Dragoon Dancing: Executing the commands of attack-move-attack in such a way as to be moving during the cooldowns without reducing the rate of fire. Useful both for killing SCVs and maximizing damage vs. melee units.
.... I'm not certain but I think sometimes using Drop Mine-detection u can achieve the mine to detonate without taking any damage. Dragoon dancing has nothing to do with this topic, it's just a regular hit&run tacic. Maybe more of consideration in TvT goliath stop mine killing, or gol+dropship unloading so that slow projectiles won't hit u.
I've heard of detonating the mines, but haven't seen it done enough to know whether it is actually deliberately possible.
I debated on putting it in, but Dragoon dancing is an evolved version of the standard get-out-of-the-way tactic because of the cooldown factor, meaning that they lose no time (hardly possible for units with a faster rate of fire).
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actually most people just call these things micro --
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Dragoon dancing is micro, if you're going to add micro tricks or techniques, you have a lot of work to do.
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United States10771 Posts
Heh knew it all, but thanks for uh getting things together
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i was expecting something cooler...
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Central African Repu3201 Posts
On August 23 2005 14:54 StarN wrote:
i was expecting something cooler...
Same here ...
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On August 23 2005 14:43 Echo wrote:
actually most people just call these things micro --
Micro includes all manner of positioning, grouping, focusing fire, dancing hurt units, etc. The idea of this thread is to be a little more specific, providing tactics that are more specialized and specific to certain units/matchups. For example, retreating injured units is important to all races and useful in almost every battle. So is focusing fire. Equally important is a good split. Yes, these are all TYPES of micro, but hopefully, we can collect the more specific ones that have been developed? What are the most recent? One that I was recently impressed with was Reach's trick to destroy spider mines with 3+ dragoons without detection. Sure, it's easy with marines and even goliaths, who shoot quickly enough to destroy them instantly when in decent groups, but witht he slow firing Dragoons, I thought it quite a feat.
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On August 23 2005 15:50 SuNDAnce wrote:Same here ...
So provide it
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Well, if being specific is the thing...
Zealotbomb (toss): Dropping zealots among sieged tanks to draw fire away from your frontline units and make siegetanks do splashdamage against their own units.
Carrier hit'n'run (toss): Moving carriers out of harm while still having all the interceptors out and attack the enemy.
Speeddrop: (all) intead of unloading units regularly click the grouplist to force them out.
Mutalisk hit'n'run (zerg): Stack mutalisks tightly together ontop another unit/mineralpatch, then pull them back instantly after attacking to keep them from spreading out.
Terran wallin.
Floating ebay/barracks scout or siege tank vision.
Lure/bait attack to draw enemies into firing range. (I guess, since I don't think the AI was built to commit suicide )
Friendly stasis choke point bock.
Parasite critter.
Oh, and 4 POOL!!!!!!
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