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On September 27 2010 10:28 Killswitch wrote:
So what would you TLer's think about me trying to get this on Liquipedia? As there seems to be a lack of this info there an I think it would fit perfectly there.
I learned a lot from the "general concepts" and mechanics sections of the strategy wiki here: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Strategy
Perhaps you could add to the various sub-topics of that page? Or maybe it needs a "getting started" page for new players?
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I think newer players (like myself) who are trying to move to zerg after trying one of the "easy" races would really benefit from someone writing a guide on zerg marco.
some general and some more specific stuff.
General would be the different ways of injecting larva (backspace inject or Psystarcrafts multiple hotkey setuP)
specific would be some guidelines on when to use larva for units and when to drone hard. (just guidelines.)
and a lot of people on the forum mention the different ways of flanking with zerg, but it would be helpful to consolidate them into an Uber Zerg guide, because i think with zerg unit control is more important compared to terran or Toss, where 1a can work.
Also helpful would be some map analysis, what to look out for on different maps, I know a lot of people (myself included) learn by osmosis, and just playing a lot, but having a consolidated guide would be really helpful.
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On September 25 2010 07:33 Pfeff wrote:
Just want to argue this. I don't care who says what. As a Zerg, sound is extremely important for both queens popping and larva inject finishing. To ignore those is plain ignorant and hindering yourself for no reason
The rest of the post looks good, just wanted to point out that because one of the best players does it does not mean it is a good idea. It's actually a horrible idea
Seeing as how Idra trained in a professional environment for a couple years, he would be one of the best authorities on how to practice properly.
In the first place, I think Pfeff is arguing against a straw man here. The goal is to improve the use of vision, not to limit the use of hearing. You can even train use of sound separately if you think it's such a critical skill.
This practice method is primarily meant to train one skill: using the minimap.
Most people do not make nearly enough use of the minimap. It's extremely important for tracking enemy movements and knowing where things are happening as soon as possible. In fact, this is even more essential for zerg because you should have a large presence on the map via overlords/creep tumors.
I would still argue about the sound thing. I don't have delays at all that I've noticed, but I only really listen for the important ones (queen and larva), so I'm not really sure what you're talking about. I just find it kinda stupid to practice something that is less than optimal.
You can find out that an army is approaching via the minimap before you're actually being engaged. An example scenario is if some dropships were coming for your main, and they happened to barely cross your field of vision. If you were watching the minimap, you could respond in time to handle the drop. If you are already getting the attack message, you're too late.
People have already cited weight training as a counterexample to your point about practicing under suboptimal conditions. A good training regimen will often focus on certain skill aspects, which involves removing other distractions. In this case, we are removing the crutch of sound to try and force a person to use vision more.
Besides, any information that you can get with sound, you can also get by looking at the left side of the screen and the minimap. It would be superior to use both sensory cues if only for the additional redundancy. However, if you're good enough at using vision then sound is completely unnecessary.
In conclusion: It is clear that most players are deficient in their use of vision and the minimap. This practice method is geared towards fixing this deficiency, and it is endorsed by someone who has trained with the best in the world for years. It would almost certainly do people some good to try it out.
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Very nice thread yes 
I like how you summon up stuff from a few different dailies of Day9..
I would maybe suggest that you put in Day9's Newbie Tuesday as a recommended, as many players will benefit from this i guess. Myself included
Thumbs up, good work!
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I haven't thought about playing without sound and was always wondering what they listened to when playing.
Thanks a lot, that's a great summary!
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RE:Queuing: As Protoss I like to queue 3 probes per Nexus then chrono boost them all, ever so often.
I also queue SCVs as Terran. While I know it's less effective than for Protoss, I find that the SCV build time is too much for me to keep a constant check on, so I like to keep the queues around 3, so if I ever forget it I got some padding.
I guess it's about "winning now because you don't have a shitty econ" versus "winning later by learning to do it right."
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Sound is useful, for example when your army is attacked by an army which has some Dark Templars in it. Then you can throw a scan as Terran.
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On September 27 2010 16:43 Servius_Fulvius wrote:
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet:
When using a build order from liquipedia, make sure you do your research and play around with it to learn what, exactly, the build is trying to accomplish.
It was easier in BW to watch 30 VODS of the same strategy and understand the flow of the strategy. SC2 hasn't really evolved "standard" play, so learnign about and playing the strategy will help you a lot more than watching "what it's supposed to be". I'm not saying DON'T watch a bunch of replays either - you need to mindfully decipher the plan of a build that isn't your own (which is still quite murky given SC2's age)
Yeah this is very true. Anything in SC2 that has been labeled standard already is subject to change.
The game is too new and it's being tweaked still. So make sure you do play around with the builds. Thanks for adding mate.
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As a newbie myself who is pretty determined to learn the game and get good at it, I'll take the liberty to add my own observations.
As far as I can see there are several stages of learning the game (at least this is how it played out for me):
- Getting to know the interface/units/abilities
This is the absolute fundamental. What hotkeys do what, what units do what, what buildings do what. Without this you're completely lost and I remember my first games going "wait, what countered maruaders again?" or "what the hell are immortals good for?".
- Getting to know the mechanics
After you know what does what the essential thing is figuring out how to get what you want. You end up learning why macro is so important and how you go about getting good macro up. This is incidentally also when I chose my race permanantly.
This is also where I learned about scouting, timings, attack moving vs. moving, focus firing and so on - basically all the general things that apply to all the races. To someone who has not played RTS before, the mechanics at first seemed very alien to me. I'm sure I spent at least a month figuring out when to expand and why the hell I needed that many drones to sustain my income.
- Refining your basics
This is what I'm currently doing - somewhere between silver and plat is when you'll be refining your basics. You'll learn sensible build orders (maybe even work out your own styles). You'll get to know the maps and get to know how to execute certain strategies. I personally believe this is the longest and hardest part of SC2 - and probably something you never stop doing. You can always refine something more, make something go a little faster
The difference is however how much you want to improve and what you take from your wins/losses. I personally find it very hard to analyze my own games and figure out what was the root cause of things going right or wrong. However I feel just that is what's necessary to get better - figure out what is going wrong and what is working.
As an afterthought to that last line, just because something works doesn't mean it can't be improved though - which seems to be a trap many people (including myself) fall into.
Don't know where things go from here as I'm still in the midst of the learning process.
What I can say is seeing my own improvement is very satisfying. When I realize: Huh, that's something I couldn't have pulled off two days ago! I feel like I got better.
To me, that's what laddering and playing SC2 is all about. Not winning but improving and experimenting - learning the game. As long as there's something to get better at, I have this feeling I have to at least try and do it better - even if I can't actually do it better at the moment.
Topics brought up already:
To the earlier debate of sound/nosound, when I played counterstrike, I actually improved a LOT by having sound off and relying on eyesight over hearing. I can see it working with SC2 as well - however I don't feel safe playing with sound off in SC2 for whatever reason.
The minimap was also brought up as an important thing. Again, drawing from past BF2 experience I remember I figured out I had to track several things at once and relying on the minimap was the ONLY way to track all of them. Let me see if I can get them all together:
- What is the team doing
- Where are the enemy
- Where can I be the most useful
- Which vehicles are taken?
- Shooting at stuff/walking/driving
- What do I need to achieve my goal (vehicle, teammate etc.)
Of those 6 points (I'm sure there are more but those were the ones I can remember) the first 4 can be accomplished using only the minimap.
In SC2 I have the same feeling. Generally I macro with micro as an afterthought unless it's a very critical battle. Now, relying on the minimap is essential if I want to know what's up. I want units everywhere to scout for possible troop movement. I want (as Z) lings running back and forth to see what's up every so often. I want to see every angle I possibly can so if something moves I'll see the red/blue/whatever dot and be able to react right away.
I still fail at this very frequently but that's part of learning. I'm not entirely sure how this ties into sound/audio queues though.
My guess would be there's no reason to play without audio unless you want to specifically focus on improving minimap awareness - however I also believe minimap/visual awareness can be achieved with sound on as well.
/end wall of text - maybe someone will find something interesting in this.
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On September 25 2010 12:21 bronzeterran wrote:Who doesn't love lightning-fast problem solving with explosions?
This may be the best and pithiest explanation of why SC is so great.
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On September 29 2010 08:19 mololu wrote:
As a newbie myself who is pretty determined to learn the game and get good at it, I'll take the liberty to add my own observations.
As far as I can see there are several stages of learning the game (at least this is how it played out for me):
- Getting to know the interface/units/abilities
This is the absolute fundamental. What hotkeys do what, what units do what, what buildings do what. Without this you're completely lost and I remember my first games going "wait, what countered maruaders again?" or "what the hell are immortals good for?".
- Getting to know the mechanics
After you know what does what the essential thing is figuring out how to get what you want. You end up learning why macro is so important and how you go about getting good macro up. This is incidentally also when I chose my race permanantly.
This is also where I learned about scouting, timings, attack moving vs. moving, focus firing and so on - basically all the general things that apply to all the races. To someone who has not played RTS before, the mechanics at first seemed very alien to me. I'm sure I spent at least a month figuring out when to expand and why the hell I needed that many drones to sustain my income.
- Refining your basics
This is what I'm currently doing - somewhere between silver and plat is when you'll be refining your basics. You'll learn sensible build orders (maybe even work out your own styles). You'll get to know the maps and get to know how to execute certain strategies. I personally believe this is the longest and hardest part of SC2 - and probably something you never stop doing. You can always refine something more, make something go a little faster
The difference is however how much you want to improve and what you take from your wins/losses. I personally find it very hard to analyze my own games and figure out what was the root cause of things going right or wrong. However I feel just that is what's necessary to get better - figure out what is going wrong and what is working.
As an afterthought to that last line, just because something works doesn't mean it can't be improved though - which seems to be a trap many people (including myself) fall into.
Don't know where things go from here as I'm still in the midst of the learning process.
What I can say is seeing my own improvement is very satisfying. When I realize: Huh, that's something I couldn't have pulled off two days ago! I feel like I got better.
To me, that's what laddering and playing SC2 is all about. Not winning but improving and experimenting - learning the game. As long as there's something to get better at, I have this feeling I have to at least try and do it better - even if I can't actually do it better at the moment.
Topics brought up already:
To the earlier debate of sound/nosound, when I played counterstrike, I actually improved a LOT by having sound off and relying on eyesight over hearing. I can see it working with SC2 as well - however I don't feel safe playing with sound off in SC2 for whatever reason.
The minimap was also brought up as an important thing. Again, drawing from past BF2 experience I remember I figured out I had to track several things at once and relying on the minimap was the ONLY way to track all of them. Let me see if I can get them all together:
- What is the team doing
- Where are the enemy
- Where can I be the most useful
- Which vehicles are taken?
- Shooting at stuff/walking/driving
- What do I need to achieve my goal (vehicle, teammate etc.)
Of those 6 points (I'm sure there are more but those were the ones I can remember) the first 4 can be accomplished using only the minimap.
In SC2 I have the same feeling. Generally I macro with micro as an afterthought unless it's a very critical battle. Now, relying on the minimap is essential if I want to know what's up. I want units everywhere to scout for possible troop movement. I want (as Z) lings running back and forth to see what's up every so often. I want to see every angle I possibly can so if something moves I'll see the red/blue/whatever dot and be able to react right away.
I still fail at this very frequently but that's part of learning. I'm not entirely sure how this ties into sound/audio queues though.
My guess would be there's no reason to play without audio unless you want to specifically focus on improving minimap awareness - however I also believe minimap/visual awareness can be achieved with sound on as well.
/end wall of text - maybe someone will find something interesting in this.
Nice, I do agree with all of that. Infact if you don't mind I would like to edit that in and give you credit.
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Thanks man, thats a lot of help. I've been watching Day[9] netcast every night and its just awesome. I think you really was able to summarize the basics.
As a ultra-newbie player, Im having more problem with the little timings and the no-no queuing issue. Sometimes I queue a little just to make sure things are coming up as i find very difficult to macro/micro/manage a lot of things all the time. I don't know if theres some technique to train that besides playing a lot!
Anyway, another issue for the newbies (or at least the UBER newbies like me) that sometimes I experienced and that Im sure others have been into is the fear of being crushed online.
I think I would add some of what Day[9] had said about it in some newbie tuesdays:
#10. losing = good = learning from it. Do not be afraid of it and just set a goal to be attained everyday: no matter what, play 3 games.
That really helped me a lot in playing more often online and in result learning more.
Thanks again, nice thread.
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On September 29 2010 12:41 Killswitch wrote:
Nice, I do agree with all of that. Infact if you don't mind I would like to edit that in and give you credit.
Sure, feel free. Glad to see my ramblings aren't totally insane.
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here's my newbie sc2 mini-guide:
1. don't fight to kill the other guy, fight to control parts of the map.
2. expand to the parts of the map you control, even if it means cutting units
3. increase production
repeat steps 1 - 3 in order to
4. win game
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On September 26 2010 13:16 FC.Strike wrote:
I think the "don't queue units" rule should be given an exception for workers. Bronze/Silver players generally have extremely low APM (I've seen as little as 15-20), and if they're not queuing a few workers they'll just end up having a terrible economy. Even current pros queue 2 workers as the game starts dragging on.
This depends so much on the race though. As a toss, you always want to queue up 2 workers whenever you are chronoboosting, because a chronoboost lasts just about to push out 2 workers. It's just basically less work for you to queue up two, instead of being forced to check your nexus unnecessarily often. Other than chrono boosting probes though, I never queue up more than one a time unless I am expo'ing and I need those probes produced while I am doing something else, like fighting.
Those are the only real exceptions to queue'ing units if you ask me though. You can also queue if you know your unit is about to finish very soon so you don't loose production time, but that's more of a no brainer and I don't necessarily see it as queue'ing in that sense.
Most people do not make nearly enough use of the minimap. It's extremely important for tracking enemy movements and knowing where things are happening as soon as possible.
But this is also one of the things that improves over time. I am way better at noting medivac drops now, and terrans rarely get it off unless I am spending my energy elsewhere, i.e. trying to micro my units in battle. At which point the reason why I failed to notice that medivac drop was because of my inability to multitask, and that's not something turning off the sound will improve. While I agree with you that using the minimap is important, it's one of those things that improve as you generally improve.
I usually play with music on anyway, but currently my multitasking skill is holding me back, not whether I can hear sound effects or not. I doubt my multitasking skill would significantly improve by removing sound, and frankly, I think it's partially a taste-issue and what kind of learning style you have. In WoW for example, I use a lot of addons that use sound effects to announce things, because I react much better to sound than visual input. I mean, I use this addon called SexyCooldowns for all of my characters, but yet I sometimes miss maelstrom even though I can clearly see the icon on my addon bar, or that I miss eclipse even though there are big large letters on my screen. I just think some people work differently and some might work better with sound. I would love to be able to customize the sound effects for SC2 in order to make it more reactive.
To me, the logic is even reversed. If I hear the sound of the gateway being finished, I don't have to scroll over several times to check if it is, I can just wait until I hear the sound and spend time doing things that have to be done right now. It frees up my awareness so I can for example spend more time looking at my minimap than staring at my gateway waiting for it to finish. That's my experience with sounds. It frees up the stuff I have to look at but wouldn't need to, so I can look more on stuff I HAVE to look at, such as the minimap.
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You guys dont get the point, what he basically says:
If you learn to practise without sound, it forces you to watch your minimap more, and check your expensions more often. This might even increase your APM or awereness (think if drops, cordination of opponents army etc). But obviously, yes playing without sound has a disadvantage.
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Well, no-sound can be one of many techniques for improvements in some areas. Seems nice if u want to improve your visual reaction time. So why not give it a try?
I guess that doesn't mean that you will never play with sounds again. Its for training purposes I guess.
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I find that my biggest problem right now is getting smoked by drops. Especially on those novice maps where there's rocks blocking stuff that normally is open. I find that I'm often out of position or that I don't have enough drop defense, or that I'm not anticipating the timing of the drop or air attack (if playing against a Toss). I'm playing most Terran and usually I have my units rallied to my front, and if I get dropped I have a hard time cycling units back and lose a lot of SCVs. Is it better to have your troops in your main? What if they cycle back and forth between your main and your nat?
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It's nice to see that some people get what I mean by the no sound thing.
Gener- Yes drops from Terran are basically Terran saying, "I can and will rip your face off and beat you with out". Which is part of the reason I have been playing Terran a bit more in practice games. Both, from what it sounds. My suggestion is build supply depots aroung your base, as to force them to make a drop farther in. Which gives you more time to react. Whatch your mini map, and get Stim to be able to move your bioball faster.
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Before you put anything major on liquipedia you should probably run it past someone who helps run it, just ask someone on irc.
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EPT
