|
I had a thought, thinking about how a lot of people seem to be concerned about the "lack of micro" in SC2 compared to SC1, and how there won't be as clear a distinction (or awe factor) when watching pros, therefore eventually not being as viable as a spectator sport.
My thought was, maybe the mechanic discovered with queue-attacking could be this distinction: It's incredibly difficult to do and incredibly beneficial (I think..)
I'm sure most of you are familiar with what I'm talking about, see here for where I first learned about it:
+ Show Spoiler +
Basically, if you tell a group of ranged attacking units to attack single targets in a queue, the group "assigns" intelligently who will attack who so there's a lot less overkill than if you just attack move.
I play zerg and tried doing this in a match with my roaches against some SCVs and it's incredibly hard to do quickly without miss clicking and queueing up a move command (bad!)
What are your thoughts, could this be one of the factors that separates pros from the rest of the playerbase? I think it would be pretty darn epic to see someone be able to roll up in a base with a pack of hydras or roaches and surgically obliterate a ball of marines with very little overkill...
If anything this tactic seems underused considering how powerful it appears to be when done right..
|
If done right, this will be awesome. Those SCVs were moving in predictable patterns and he had massive splash, this would be a lot harder on something like stalkers shooting at moving targets. At least with sieged tanks you can't accidentally attack move.
|
if you do shift a+left click it's less risky but slower. I usually don't take risks.
Basically I am winning with shift + focus fire my every tvt bio fight.
|
On March 12 2010 17:02 freelander wrote:
if you do shift a+left click it's less risky but slower. I usually don't take risks.
Basically I am winning with shift + focus fire my every tvt bio fight.
I just got a sudden desire to test this with Shift-Ctrl-Rightclick... This may be the saving grace of the confusing new Ctrl-Rightclick attack move command?
Of course if it makes it easy then my original thought may be invalidated.. hmm.. but still more evidence how important micro still is
|
On March 12 2010 16:54 BladeRunner wrote:
I had a thought, thinking about how a lot of people seem to be concerned about the "lack of micro" in SC2 compared to SC1, and how there won't be as clear a distinction (or awe factor) when watching pros, therefore eventually not being as viable as a spectator sport.
My thought was, maybe the mechanic discovered with queue-attacking could be this distinction: It's incredibly difficult to do and incredibly beneficial (I think..)
SC2 isn't going to end up lacking micro, there will always be ways you can improve the efficiency of your army in battle through micro. It is also unlikely that there will be a perfect way to micro because even if it gets down to that point there will still probably be room for players to win the micro battle mentally i.e. anticipate and counter what the opponent is doing.
What sc has and what sc2 will probably lack is that micro in sc is easily understood and easily appreciated by the non-hardcore player. I think sc2 will be more like war3 in this respect - there may be a fuckton of micro going on but it won't be easy to understand and appreciate.
The usual caveats about how the game isn't even out yet apply but that's my prediction.
|
Good points Crunchums, and for the record I agree, there will be plenty there for pros to master - I didn't think about the idea that it's harder for a spectator to understand.
By the way, I just got done testing and Ctrl-Rightclicking a single target does not prioritize that target, and therefore doesn't work the same as shift-rightclicking to intelligently queue up the damage. Shift-Ctrl-Rightclick on a bunch of targets is the same as attack-moving on a bunch of targets, and they don't focus fire.
|
You can shift-A click, then while still holding down shift, left-click on the units you want to attack, you don't have to press A again for each new attack
|
What an amazing way to set priority targets! Thanks a lot for sharing this tip. 
|
I just did some testing of this with Terran. It seems most units DO overkill. The units on T that don't overkill are siege tanks, ground mode vikings, reapers, hellions, and ghosts. Queue-attacking light units with lots of reapers works amazingly.
|
I already queue attack commands in Broodwar in dragoon vs dragoon battles (although they don't execute it as efficiently of course). If a 70 apm D level player can do it, I wouldn't call it pro-level micro.
|
I do this in SC1 already in tank vs goon battles.
|
On March 12 2010 19:16 Catch]22 wrote:
I do this in SC1 already in tank vs goon battles.
Yeah, I have been doing this as well since SC1.
|
lol the point was it's AUTO-MICRO, you see those tanks just kill everything at once instead of fire-ing at target 1 then 2 then 3 then 4 etc.... yes less overkill, you still need to click every unit you want hit though which would be the 'micro' part
|
It boggles my mind that I don't see this in high level ZvZs all the time. If you've got 20+ roaches, what is stopping you from putting them in 2 separate groups and focus firing one roach down at a time. Hell, once you have them upped to a certain degree, you could easily win battles you had less numbers in by doing this while burrowing the damaged ones.
A-move hurts to watch in slow battles like these.
|
On March 12 2010 17:41 rifi wrote:
You can shift-A click, then while still holding down shift, left-click on the units you want to attack, you don't have to press A again for each new attack
You can even press "a" and then just shift-click everything. No need to shift "a" either. ;-)
|
On March 12 2010 22:30 Artrey wrote:Show nested quote +On March 12 2010 17:41 rifi wrote:
You can shift-A click, then while still holding down shift, left-click on the units you want to attack, you don't have to press A again for each new attack You can even press "a" and then just shift-click everything. No need to shift "a" either. ;-)
Does pressing A, then hold shift and left clicking a bunch actually do priority targets though? In my testing with Ctrl-rightclick, the units I was testing (admittedly only stalkers/sentries) would do the same thing whether I ctrl-rightclicked on a building or on the ground, and that was attack whatever they wanted to / whatever was closest.
Regardless, I think you'd have the same problem I was having right? If you accidently miss a target and queue an attack move, the units will continue doing that until nothing's left at that location right?
|
I do this all the time with Z. Grab a portion of my hydras and focus fire them on the medivacs one after another.
|
On March 12 2010 18:50 rifi wrote:
I just did some testing of this with Terran. It seems most units DO overkill. The units on T that don't overkill are siege tanks, ground mode vikings, reapers, hellions, and ghosts. Queue-attacking light units with lots of reapers works amazingly.
The important distinction here is that these units all have "instant" attacks (I believe, not sure on Hellions).
Units that fire projectiles can still overkill because their attacks have a travel time.
|
On March 13 2010 02:21 RPGabe wrote:Show nested quote +On March 12 2010 18:50 rifi wrote:
I just did some testing of this with Terran. It seems most units DO overkill. The units on T that don't overkill are siege tanks, ground mode vikings, reapers, hellions, and ghosts. Queue-attacking light units with lots of reapers works amazingly. The important distinction here is that these units all have "instant" attacks (I believe, not sure on Hellions). Units that fire projectiles can still overkill because their attacks have a travel time.
Interesting observation, in which case Zerg wouldn't have any this could be used on besides Infested terrans right? And I guess for protoss it would only be immortals? This would explain why I didn't see the behavior with sentinels beam attack, which would apply to archons as well?
If this is really a terran only thing it may not be as crucial to the overall game but still a pretty important skill to have as terran I would guess? I'll test some more tonight with A-shiftclick and ctrl-shiftclick as terran.
|
It's hugely important for Terran because it affects Marines and Tanks, which are two units you'll be frequently microing in pitched battles to get the most effect. Getting the best benefits of focus fire without the penalties of overkill makes units much much more efficient and effective.
Terran armies will have to be micro'd at a higher level to make use of this, but the benefits are big.
|
On March 12 2010 19:25 lolaloc wrote:Show nested quote +On March 12 2010 19:16 Catch]22 wrote:
I do this in SC1 already in tank vs goon battles. Yeah, I have been doing this as well since SC1.
That's a good point actually, In SCBW we all learned the amount of hits/timing for a unit to die in battles like this. If the AI just automatically saves wasted shots, then there is no skill in learning to time these so you overkill less often.
Like even in wc3, the units still overkilled so there was the skill involved there of timing or judging how many shots.
With the tanks in sc2, i've noticed that lings really really get fucking owned by them because they don't overkill anymore, this is a really bad thing imo.
Where normally (scbw) 12 lings would easily rush in and kill 3 tanks, now MAYBE a couple will get into melee range and the tanks can now just unseiged and machine gun attack the lings.
Someone should make a thread about this on the beta feedback forums.
|
On March 13 2010 05:24 CharlieMurphy wrote:
If the AI just automatically saves wasted shots, then there is no skill in learning to time these so you overkill less often.
It only does for units that deal instant damage, and that's because you can't target a dead unit.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
