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Learning something obvious that improved your SC2

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
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Myrlin
Profile Joined August 2010
United States9 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-11-06 12:56:58
September 21 2010 14:19 GMT
#1
So,

Plat 1600 1v1 random player, 1400 diamond 2v2 on my original account.
800 Diamond on my friends acct I use for 1v1 sometimes.

I just realized you can chrono boost the Warpgates cooldown time as Protoss.
The reason it's funny is because I play ALOT of Protoss and I win ALOT!


What have you recently learned that should have been obvious that will now make you even better than you were 2 seconds ago before you knew it. (Any Race)

Updated with this nice summary of the tips inside.

On November 02 2010 04:30 Skrattybones wrote:
Hey guys,

I just went through this entire thread and have pulled (almost) every tip posted in here. I will now proceed to put them in here, separated by "All", "Terran", "Protoss", and "Zerg". If the OP wishes to copy this list and add it to the original post, awesome.

Also note that I attempted to only include tips which are absolutely true, but as I only play Zerg I haven't gone through and verified them.
--

All:

+ Show Spoiler +


- Playing with HP Bars makes micro way easier

- Hitting Ctrl+F1 instantly selects all Idle Workers.

- You can hold down a hotkey instead of pressing it over and over (IE: Hold down F and click everywhere you want multiple fungal growths with multiple Infestors). This stands true for practically everything, across every race.

- You can add new units to an existing control group by holding Shift and setting them to the group you want.

- Transferring some harvesters to a new expansion is better for your economy than simply saturating from scratch.

- MULEs can be spotted dropping by everybody, even in fog of war.

- 'Alt' shows/hides health bars, depending on whether you have them turned on or off.

- Spacebar will center you on your base.

- Backspace will cycle you through multiple bases.

- Tab will cycle through multiple things on the same control group.

- pressing 'C' on a worker with resources in his hand will send him back to deliver the resources automatically.

- You can target fire with any form of static defense (IE: bunkers, spine crawlers, photon cannons)

- Holding shift allows you to set multiple waypoints, making it easier to scout multiple bases automatically.

- By selecting units and right-clicking on another unit you order them to follow that particular unit. This is helpful for ordering faster units to follow behind slower units.

- workers pinned/trapped by enemy units can be rescued by ordering them to a mineral patch. They will phase through their obstacle to get there. This also works for scouting an enemy base walled-off with a unit guarding the path.

- Massive units (Thors/Colossus/Ultralisk) will break forcefields.

- You can turn on a Flier Helper option to help accurately target flying units with spells.

- You can move the camera by holding the middle mouse button, as opposed to dragging your cursor to the edge of the screen and/or using the arrow keys.

- If you are under attack at your mineral line by lings or zealots early on, and have fewer units to defend, grab all of your probes and select attack, then mine, then attack, then mine, with a few game seconds in between each command. What you are doing is changing their priorities so that unless your opponent has queued attacked every single one of your workers, their attacking units will face your probes, then switch to your units, then to the probes, then to your units, effectively making them only hit your actual attackers about half the time. You can also trap units between the probes because they will ignore pathing to mine, then attack, then ignore pathing, then attack.


- You can start production on units even when supply blocked. Once you remedy the situation the units will begin production automatically.

- You can have more than 24 units bound to a control group. It will open up a new page within that control group to display those units.


Terran:

+ Show Spoiler +

- You can call MULEs down directly on to mineral patches.

- SCVs can attack.

- Tech Labs/ Reactors are universal. You can swap buildings around to make use of them without needing to build more add-ons.

- You can drop Vikings and Thors from Medivacs.

- MULEs can repair mechs. Calling them down in battle is a fast way to get repairs done.

- You can use Medivacs to quickly load up your army and fly away from a battle, instead of just using them for healing.

- SCVs can repair Protoss mechanical units as well. (great for team games.)

- Medivacs can heal all biological units of any race on the same team (also great for team games.)

- If you have multiples of the same production building selected (IE: Four Barracks) the game will automatically spread the production of that unit evenly across all the selected buildings.

- Hellions can target and effectively damage/destroy zerg larva.

- Pressing 'D' and clicking a Medivac while loaded with units will begin dropping units while the Medivac is moving.

- SCVs can be set to auto-repair.

- The Hunter Seeker Missile will destroy zerg larva in one shot.

- Splash damage will hit burrowed units if unburrowed units are being targeted.

- Marines and Marauders can be stimmed inside bunkers.

- EMP temporarily uncovers cloaked units.

- You can que up movement and re-sieging your tanks while they are un-sieging.

- You can drop MULEs anywhere you have vision. You can drop MULEs on the enemy base after a scan to force sieged tanks to attack them, damaging buildings by the splash.

- SCVs on auto-repair loaded into a Medivac will repair everything they can inside the Medivac (possibly at a higher resource cost).


Protoss:

+ Show Spoiler +

- Chronoboost reduces Warpgate cooldown.

- Hallucinated units can scout for you.

- Stalker's Blink can be qued with Shift to ensure none get left behind.

- You can set autocast on Carriers to automatically replenish lost Interceptors.

- You can que up targets for Interceptors so they don't return to their Carrier after a target is destroyed.

- Psionic Storm doesn't stack. Make sure to spread multiple casts out.

- Guardian Shield doesn't stack. Spread them out across all your units instead of trying to over-shield your heavy hitters.

- If you have multiple Nexus' hotkeyed using Chronoboost will automatically use the first Nexus' energy, even if other Nexus' have more.

- If a pylon goes down while units are warping in all the units will be canceled.

- You can feedback ANYTHING with energy. This includes Thors, Banshees, and Queens.

- on Scrap Station (with vision) you can blink to and from the island, and past rocks.

- Warp Gate units don't share the same cooldowns.

- Void Rays can stand up to eleven shots from a Thor.

- Cybernetics Core only costs 150 minerals as opposed to 200.

- You can Chronoboost from the minimap.

- Hallucinated Phoenixes soak up Point Defense Drone energy.


Zerg:

+ Show Spoiler +

- If you have a Lair you can research Lair upgrades at other Hatcheries.

- Overlords can spew creep on buildings to keep them safe if your hatchery gets destroyed.

- You can bind all Queens to a single hotkey, then select all and inject larva to a hatchery. The closest Queen will inject.

- Nydus Canals can spawn multiple entrances.

- You can rally units directly into a Nydus Canal.

- Nydus Worms can spawn anywhere, and generate Creep when they successfully form.

- Banelings can be detonated manually while burrowed.

- Burrowed units can have Burrow set to autocast. They will unburrow when an enemy is in range and attack.

- Inject Larva has a slight cooldown during the animation. If you try to inject multiple Hatcheries side-by-side, the Queen might skip the second and move straight to the third.

- Hatcheries still being morphed can be added to a control group, regardless of whether they are finished morphing or not.

- Having multiple Queens at a base makes for a good defense against early aggression.

- You can select multiple drones and command them to make a building. Only the closest drone will make the building.

- You can select multiple drones and que up multiple buildings. Only one drone for each building will leave the mineral patches.

- You still need to research Burrow to make use of the Tunneling Claws upgrade for Roaches.

- Creep Tumors can clone themselves to continue the spread of creep.

- Multiple creep tumors in the same area will speed the spread of creep exponentially.

- Queens can spawn larva through the minimap.

- Infestor's Fungal Growth works on/ reveals cloaked units.

- Infestor's Neural Parasite will instantly kill a zerg egg.

- Infestor's Neural Parasite works on Motherships. You can use the enemy Mothership to Vortex his own army.

- Infestors can spawn Infested Terrans while burrowed.

- A well placed burrowed unit can stop a building from being built on that spot.

- The Overlord Speed upgrade affects morphed Overseers as well.

- You can cancel a cloned Creep Tumor before it finishes to return it to the tumor you cloned it from.

- Overlords are no longer a detector. They have to morph to Overseer, which is available once you have a Lair.

- You can Shift-add eggs to a control group. (IE: If you have mutas bound to '1', and you make more you can use Shift to add them to '1'.)

- Hatcheries larva cap extends past seven, but caps in the high teens/early twenties.

- Burrowed roaches are slightly visible while moving.




Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.
Tenks
Profile Joined April 2010
United States3104 Posts
September 21 2010 14:21 GMT
#2
Playing with HP bars always on makes micro a ton easier.


Also calling MULEs down right on a mineral patch. I think I went like 5 beta patches without knowing that.
Wat
storm44
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
1293 Posts
September 21 2010 14:22 GMT
#3
im in diamond and I didn't know that scv's could attack lol
hEndO
Profile Joined June 2010
United States124 Posts
September 21 2010 14:23 GMT
#4
as Zerg i just learned that once you have 1 lair but 2 hatches you can get Overlord speed on one and Overlord drop on the other. I always thought i could only research them at the Lair. =/
jamesr12
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States1549 Posts
September 21 2010 14:23 GMT
#5
On September 21 2010 23:23 hEndO wrote:
as Zerg i just learned that once you have 1 lair but 2 hatches you can get Overlord speed on one and Overlord drop on the other. I always thought i could only research them at the Lair. =/


took me awhile to recgonize this change from BW as well
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=306479
DTown
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States428 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-09-21 14:24:22
September 21 2010 14:24 GMT
#6
I just discovered something that is very situational, but still I feel this thread is an appropriate venue to share it. If you are zerg and you reach lair tech, always have some OL's pooping creep asap. I mean, you should be doing this anyway but I found the additional advantage that if your Lair gets sniped, you can move the OL's around and they will continue pooping creep. This is very useful to keep your buildings alive while you rebuild your hatchery, either there or somewhere else.
bokeevboke
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Singapore1674 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-09-21 14:24:43
September 21 2010 14:24 GMT
#7
I still don't know how to drop units from medivac properly.

You can bind all queens to one hotkey. Then select all queens and inject larva to a hach. The closest queen will inject which means the queen which actually guarding the expansion.
Its grack
teh_longinator
Profile Joined March 2010
Canada725 Posts
September 21 2010 14:28 GMT
#8
That you can hotkey a nydus canal, and have more than one exit per entrance :s
NikonTC
Profile Joined September 2010
United Kingdom418 Posts
September 21 2010 14:33 GMT
#9
Tech Labs and Reactors are modular (a barracks tech lab works with factory etc) :p I still don't really make full use of this feature even though i've known about it for a few weeks now..
"IdrA crushes the marine push, absolutely demolishes this 2 rax play. Would not be suprised to see a GG from IdrA at any moment" Day[9]
Complete
Profile Joined October 2009
United States1864 Posts
September 21 2010 14:33 GMT
#10
How to research hallucination

(seriously, didn't know it exiseted, improving my PvZ drastically!)
Zzoram
Profile Joined February 2008
Canada7115 Posts
September 21 2010 14:33 GMT
#11
On September 21 2010 23:28 teh_longinator wrote:
That you can hotkey a nydus canal, and have more than one exit per entrance :s


Did you know you can make an exit at each hatchery, and rally your units to the worm?

It's good for bases far away to let you quickly unload the units it makes near the rest of your army.
Buffy
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Sweden665 Posts
September 21 2010 14:35 GMT
#12
On September 21 2010 23:28 teh_longinator wrote:
That you can hotkey a nydus canal, and have more than one exit per entrance :s

something that took me a while to learn to, useful on certain maps LT/Desert Oasis, can work on kulas ravine as well, but haven't tried it there yet!
Yes I am
Enervate
Profile Joined August 2010
United States1769 Posts
September 21 2010 14:36 GMT
#13
I realized that "w" was the a preset hotkey for all of your warpgates like 2 weeks ago which now lets me use the 3 hotkey for something else.
figq
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
12519 Posts
September 21 2010 14:50 GMT
#14
I know how larva works, but never brought myself to realize this means Zerg must use all available larvae asap, in order to force hatcheries to renew them. Otherwise there's likely some waste of resources on boosting larva production. It's obvious, but so important, and I'm pretty sure not many zergs optimize their strats enough to cover that.

I also learned that selecting larva along with a drone, hitting stop (and re-mine the drone) forces larva to move closer to the minerals if it's not. In addition, in the first seconds of the game, it may be useful to build the drone directly from a larva of your choice (click on the larva, not the hatch), so that it's the closest position to the minerals.
If you stand next to my head, you can hear the ocean. - Day[9]
Stegosaur
Profile Joined May 2007
Netherlands1231 Posts
September 21 2010 14:53 GMT
#15
On September 21 2010 23:23 hEndO wrote:
as Zerg i just learned that once you have 1 lair but 2 hatches you can get Overlord speed on one and Overlord drop on the other. I always thought i could only research them at the Lair. =/


:O Holy crap I just became a better Zerg, thank you thread (and starter)
O_o
MangoTango
Profile Blog Joined June 2010
United States3670 Posts
September 21 2010 14:54 GMT
#16
Burrow is tier 2 tech. :s
"One fish, two fish, red fish, BLUE TANK!" - Artosis
teh_longinator
Profile Joined March 2010
Canada725 Posts
September 21 2010 14:57 GMT
#17
On September 21 2010 23:33 Zzoram wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 21 2010 23:28 teh_longinator wrote:
That you can hotkey a nydus canal, and have more than one exit per entrance :s


Did you know you can make an exit at each hatchery, and rally your units to the worm?

It's good for bases far away to let you quickly unload the units it makes near the rest of your army.


Haha yeah, I found out that point in the same game. I meant to set my rally point CLOSE to the entrance, and ended up mis-clicking and setting my rally point in there.

On September 21 2010 23:35 Buffy wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 21 2010 23:28 teh_longinator wrote:
That you can hotkey a nydus canal, and have more than one exit per entrance :s

something that took me a while to learn to, useful on certain maps LT/Desert Oasis, can work on kulas ravine as well, but haven't tried it there yet!


I tried it on Kulas Ravine (2nd/3rd time using them. I made one at every expansion, since the 'Toss I was against decided he'd contain my base with cannons -_-.
bonifaceviii
Profile Joined May 2010
Canada2890 Posts
September 21 2010 14:57 GMT
#18
On September 21 2010 23:54 MangoTango wrote:
Burrow is tier 2 tech. :s

Baaargh, that's why I've never been able to get burrow when I want it.
Stay a while and listen || http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=354018
santoki
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States107 Posts
September 21 2010 15:00 GMT
#19
dunno if this is obvious! but i learned to drone harder at the beginning of games even against the 4gate and get units last minute. unless of course its super early pressure or 2gate. I guess just knowing when to drone. Always made too many units and got miffed on econ
Floydian
Profile Blog Joined March 2009
United Kingdom374 Posts
September 21 2010 15:01 GMT
#20
On September 21 2010 23:23 hEndO wrote:
as Zerg i just learned that once you have 1 lair but 2 hatches you can get Overlord speed on one and Overlord drop on the other. I always thought i could only research them at the Lair. =/

WHAT
Mind is blown. Thank you
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