and honestly, i fail to see all the hype it gets. I admit although i played lot of RTSes in my gaming "career" and love the genre, i am not very good player, i tend to do probably better on Call of Duty, which i played a lot for the majority of the last year, or sports games (football, ice hockey) which i always played a lot.
Anyway after playing Sins or SupCom SC2 feels like the relevation from the past... you cant zoom and your average armies consist of 10 units at best... hardly a trait of strategy, more like RPG. Simply i have no feeling i am commanding an army, this is quite an important aspect to me when it comes to RTSes. BTW i would say on average you can have 5x more buildings in your base than units in your "army"- thats pretty weird ratio, if you ask me.
Other thing, game speed, i played at Fast level, and the game is both superfast and slow at the same time. I mean the building and teching take ages, while battles are incredibly fast. I lost my army literally in a time period, i was scrolling to the place of the battle. This leads to interesting and IMHO quite stupid consequences: you lose you army in 5 second long battle and although you have money to burn and base spreading through the quarter of map, you wont be able to rebuild your units, before enemy turns majority of your base to dust...
Finally those 5 second long battles, i wonder where is the strategy part in that? Seriously unless you have 200 APM, youhave no chance to issue any commands in such a battle. All i see then is a game promoting the reflexes and faster hands, there is no strategic thinking involved.
To be fair, i never played old SC that much, so maybe my expectations were bit out of place, i expected something like Command and Conquer Generals, which i liked pretty much. SC2 however is nothing like that and i am really disappointed. Here is the hoping, that next CnC wont be trying hard to be EA´s Starcraft and will rather continue the CnC tradition with maybe few improvements taken from recent RTS hits like CoH or Supreme Commander.
Good to hear you're sticking with it and getting better. Your APM will rise naturally as you play more and get better at managing your time and keeping yourself busy. Around 50 APM is plenty to play the game properly, you don't need it in the 100's like pros have to enjoy the game and be better at it than most people. High APM is only a good thing if its being put to proper use, anyone can click around and press buttons like crazy and get to like 200APM but if you're not doing useful things with your APM you'll still lose.
Yay, you won against AI
I started to play in Beta and was very happy when I started winning against AI 1v1 regularly
Then I got to ladder and got destroyed in my first game in a most unexpecting way (cloaked banshee rush vs toss ).
But after playing 200-300 games I got to mid/high diamond and 90 apm with Zerg.
Anyways, play more and you will eventually become much better.
I also wanted to talk about the "unnecessary" chrono boost mechanic.
It is not unnecessary, it is a choice. You can use it on most of Toss buildings and you get to choose which one will get it at which time and you develop your strategy accordingly. Same with Terran, they can choose to use Mules to boost economy, put down an instant supply to let their troops continue building instead of waiting for a supply depot to be built or scan an area to see what the opponent has (or to detect invisible units). These are choices.
Only Zerg is screwed here as their spawn larva is not really a choice but a repetitive boring ability that is only here, as you put it, to make a difference between good players and bad ones. Yes, Zerg queen has some situations where they can spend that energy for other things but those are really rare (especially if they been keeping their spawn larva regular so they will not have extra energy to spare).
Don't worry about your APM. It's the kind of thing that comes naturally in time. Focus on remembering to do everything you need to do, remembering your probes, remembering your pylons, remembering to spend your money, looking at the minimap.. it takes time, but when you start getting used to it, you'll see your APM rise without any conscious effort from you.
for me a really really good rts game that has never lost flavor and is especiallly fun in multiplayer is praetorians.
I've had SC2 for around a month now, and my only real complaint about the game overall is that Roaches seem a teeny bit more powerful than they should be. (I assume they are supposed to be the Zerg version of the Marauders, so I get they neet to be tough, but 8-12 Marines(In bunkers) should do a bit more damage than they do when focus-fireing one.
As for the game overall, I really like most of the campaign (Some missions weren't to my taste, but that's true o every RTS for me.)
I haven't done any online play, though, as I suck even against a 1 on 1 Hard AI...not to mention the 4V4 Insane.
(Seriously, the game hates me...all 4 enemies combine their troops and ruch each base 1 at a time...while my guys sent the equivalent of 3-5 zealots and a stalker each, to different locations.)
-Twilight Storm | Down with Mach 10 Zerglings...
EDIT: Torin, the Queen's spawn larvae will only drain if you have more than 2 hatcheries under the control of 1 queen, which isn't necessary if you keep her at it, though I do get what you're saying about the pain of micro here.
Aside from practicing builds and learning how to defend rushes playing with or against the AI is almost pointless. Its good for new players to learn the game but its not really helpful when it comes to practicing overall strategies. The AI isn't reactive enough to when you're doing, they put together an early rush and maybe one or two more pushes and after that it goes into seemingly random unit compositions. I do use it to practice fast expands and early game strategies sometimes because you can count on the AI putting together a pretty strong early push.
meh
I'm mostly trying for achievements right now. mainly the one where you have to whin a 3v3 insane with one of each race on both teams...
on the subject of the roaches I brought up tho, anyone else feel they're just a little OP? I'm not saying they're game breaking, but their damage resistance combined with rapid burrowed regeneration, a good player would only lose them to detectors or a swarm of focus fire.
I favor the Terrans, or occasionally Protoss, so maybe I just haven't played enough zerg to know if there is a downside to Roaches?
-Twilight Storm
Roaches are Armored, so they get torn apart by Marauders and Siege tanks for Terrans (both have a big damage bonus against Armored). Protoss have forcefields (if roaches don't have burrow), or mass blink stalker shuts mass roach down hard as long as you have decent to good blink micro. Anything less than mass roach, stick a couple zealots in front and 2-3 Immortals/Collosi and the roaches are toast.
When you play against AI try cannon rushing with Protoss. You just need to start building first cannons a bit farther away and then creep closer to his main structure (you will need to figure out the minimum distance from his base where the AI does not send all his workers to kill your pylon and building cannons).
Units in campaign have different stats and abilities then in MP.
Online you can also play with other players against AI and you can play Free For All (I suggest you try this to get a feel how live opponents can play).
Roaches in online play are not that powerful, actually they get destroyed easily by many different units (they were nerfed a lot during beta and then later buffed a bit again). Against terrans they are only good against unupgraded marines, helions and reapers.
As for spawn larva, one queen is needed to 1 hatchery. Spawn larva costs 25 energy and 25 energy needs a bit more then 40s to recharge. But spawn larvae duration on a hatchery is 40s so if you keep injecting every 40s that one queen will always have near 0 energy. If you see energy rising you are not efficient enough.
Thanks for the advice.
Just timed the queen, 38 seconds to recover 25 energy, a bit slower than I thought it was but at least 1 queen can sufficiently keep a hive going with larvae with no problem(Could have swore it was going 1 energy per second before, but without a watch it is a bit hard to tell.)
Is that 38 real seconds or 38 game seconds on fastest speed?
A lot of Zergs will get 3 or more queens on 2 hatch for help with creep and defense too.
Yes, 3 queens is basically a must if you do not like losing to early Terran or Protoss air.
3 queens are also not enough if the Protoss decides to go with phoenix + void ray, but that's another matter
The Zerg are in a really bad place, the switch made to their tech tree by putting Hydralisks at tier 2, and trying to replace their tech location with a combination of Roaches and Banelings at tier 1.5 just doesn't work. Which makes the Zerg rely exclusively on Queens to do the Hydralisk's job until you can get to them, and doomed the Lurker at tier 3. I don't know how they can continue to say Roaches and Banelings overlap in role with the Lurker, when there is a fundamental difference between them, they all attack in a different manner which makes their roles dramatically different, yet they keep saying the exact same thing. The Queen's Spawn Larva are a requirement to keep up with the Terrans and the Protoss, while their macro abilities are an option not a requirement.
Then, there is the loss of the Dark Archon when the Protoss are in such a dire situation, which I simply don't understand; when they had a golden opportunity to make the Protoss even more defined as two factions working in concert.
They were moved for non-lore reasons. Dark Archons were only really used in PvZ - and only for maelstrom, effectively moved to the Infestor, and feedback, moved to the High Templar.
No, I would say Zerg is underdeveloped. It just lacks options that are easily available to other two races. And it is less fun to play with because of it.
I am really hoping the next expansion fixes this or I am probably going to quit SC2 (at least playing it, watching tournaments is much more fun then watching other sports)
Sorry, been gone a few days, it was 38 real seconds on normal speed(For the purest results possible)
From what I've noticed, only combat seems to be effected by fast speed, does the fast speed also increase energy regen rate?
I know most online games are done on fast/faster speeds, again, I just wanted to get the unaltered results for that test. There was a patch recently, maybe they altered the regen rate? IDK, I'll check it out on fastest a bit later and see if theres a difference.
EDIT: Just checked, on fastest, it takes 32 seconds for 25 energy, real time. (Where can I find Game time so I can test that too?)
When you turn on ingame timer it shows you game time which changes depending on game speed. But you should always test with fastest because that is ladder speed.
46 game seconds on fastest. What is the concept of game seconds, though? Why does there need to be a difference(Unless the game is simply programmed for time delay, i suppose= player presses button, wait x seconds, then execute command?)
Well on normal game speed game seconds are supposed to be equal to real seconds and fastest speed makes everything faster.
The only logical reason that I can come up with why it is different is the skill difference. Pros will be used to different seconds, while scrubs will not and it is another thing which gives advantage to pros.
What is the concept of game seconds, though? Why does there need to be a difference...
The game speed affects the rate at which the game updates. It's so the game can be played at different actual speeds without affecting the underlying implementation of the game.
This game must be the most overrated game ever.
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