the world's all about ach

So, i was thinking i would get sc2.
Is there any point to getting the expansions? or is that only worth it for the storyline?
Pat, mark, seren, bacon, did we all get over the "zomg sc2 is so disappointing" phase, or are there still major flaws and i shouldn't even waist the money (if so, ill take that as permission to abuse the Fk out of seren's cd key. thanks seren).

does amaz play sc2? jk, i dont care.

The expansion gives you the new storyline, the ability to play in the hots ladder, and the ability to play hots custom maps
Very few of the maps require hots (since its kindve pointless and will only make the map have less players), although i havent looked in like a month, so there may be more now

You need wol to play hots so you have to get wol no matter what so just start with that
Unless you can find a bundle that is around the same price as hots (they do that some times in sales)
If you cant find a bundle like that then just get wol because you can try out some hots features with wol then decide weather or not you want hots

I dont have hots, so when we play together, if you have hots, youll see a big thing next to my name that basically says "you are better then that guy, he's only using wol"
And we wont be able to play hots stuff

Amaz doesnt play, its mostly just me and seren, but even that is rare

Cool. good to know.

rare? well, when i get it this'll turn into starcraft party central, dont worry.

I'm in, I've kinda been a bit busy lately but I'm ready to play more

i like sc2 -- there are a few games on there that are really fun. im down to play when other people are

cool. i downloaded a cracked version last night for the campaign. i'll probably play that for a few days, then most likely get a cd key before saturday this weekend.
so lets have a game day saturday.

EDIT: mark, i dont want to hear it. you're the reason i have trust issues.

You had issues before I met you.

This is my 1000th post WOOT WOOT!! Finally!

Mark, each of us was a perfect child/teen/adult before we met you. You're like some ever eroding corrosive acid upon the moral fiber of this group. It must be the canadian blood, which is basically satan blood.

Blame Canada.

Achilles.42 wrote:

Mark, each of us was a perfect child/teen/adult before we met you. You're like some ever eroding corrosive acid upon the moral fiber of this group. It must be the canadian blood, which is basically satan blood.

This however does not apply to me.

it does if you take out "perfect" and everything following "child"

Quote :

Pat, mark, seren, bacon, did we all get over the "zomg sc2 is so disappointing" phase

They completely remade the UI a few months ago, before that bnet 2.0 was terrible
The game itself was good though
Now that they changed the bnet UI its fine

There used to be no way to browse games that people were currently playing (you know like the wc3 join game list) so you would never know what games people were playing other then the top played games which would mean those top played games would just get played more and you would never find cool new stuff
Also it was impossible to get players into less popular maps because of that (it still takes awhile for some maps to get players, but at least its not impossible anymore)

So it wasnt a phase that we had, the game was objectively disappointing until recently

I like how in the opening it calles whats-his-face "convict 626" lilo and stich references for the win.

For learning purposes, I really don't like that the campaign uses a whole bunch of unique units compared to ladder games (skirmishes? is that what they're called?). I always thought of the campaign in wc3 as being a fun way of learning how to play, so that you'd already be decently competent when you switched to ladder, but when i started playing against the AI i just felt like i had picked up a lot of bad habits and faulty strategies (couldn't use Goliaths to counter air, and microing marines with medics didn't work, seeing as how neither medics nor Goliaths are real units).

That being said, i feel like once you get good at your build via standard play, the campaign might be a lot more fun because it has a lot of unique features to it. (oh yeah, i had forgotten to even mention all the tech upgrades you get from the Protoss/zerg research sub-missions, which also have no baring in how you play lader).

I dont remember if any of you guys (pat, pat, and pat (maybe seren too)) were hating on the cutscenes when you made posts about this, but i like them. Cutscenes were basically the reason i played the campaign in wc3, and there seems to be like 3x as many cutscenes. so, happy day.

Seren, mark, what are your sc2 names / id numbers / whatever i need to add you to friends list.
You too amaz--i need to figure out if there's an enemies list.
Bacon, pat said you dont like playing sc2. do you hate us? why do you hate us?

Pat1487 wrote:

So it wasnt a phase that we had, the game was objectively disappointing until recently

i feel like your objectivity could'a been overcome with two-thirds-a'-cup of suckitup, and 3x less time spent emulating lamesauce McGee.

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Also, fuck the computers Advice. i think it was talking via "Matt" the well dressed commander-guy in the mission where you have to stop the trains in order to retrieve the 'adjuct.'
Anyway, towards the end a whole bunch of marauders spawned and started patrolling the tracts, and 'Matt' was all like "it'd be best if you avoided those guys" and im all like "well i would just kill them, but if you say its easier if i dont, than ill just use my armies to fuck around and kill the enemies bases while i wait for more trains."
After that, i didn't have enough units to kill the marauders, and every time a train came there patrol lined up with them so i had to fight both at once.
I nearly lost cuz of that shity advice. fuck you 'matt'.

So, i had a thought. (singular--i still havn't worked up to plural thoughts)
Since right now we have less than 10 people in the sc2 clan, and at one point we had over a 100 people in the wc3 clan, to me, that speaks of potential for growth.

Now, i know shit all about sc2 right now, which means my ability to do anything about this is close to nil; however, i see this changing in the near future.

sooooo, how do clans actually work on sc2? : D : D : D
shamys, chiefs, grunts, peons? can anyone invite people to the clan? can only the chief invite people?

Also, who's technically 'chief' right now? is it mark? god save us all if its mark.
But i feel like it would make sense to keep it with someone that is active-to-semi-active, which obviously doesn't matter right now because mark is gonna start being super-active again.
BUT, in the future, since pat is already accepted as our lord and master, the only thing that matters about chiefs in sc2 (and wc3 if we remake that clan again, which we should at some point before the decade ends) is not who it is, but if they'll be an interactive 'face' for anyone that globs onto our channel (same with the shammies). So even if none of these people are us, if we can guide them into being active people, we should end up with an active clan.
---

Second part to this thought:
how hard is it to give out administrative/moderating abilities on this site, pat? im mainly thinking of archiving old topics, because i dont feel like its fair if you have to be solely responsible for that.

Also, if we get more traffic, you should spam them with massive amounts of adds pat so you start getting money from the ad-cents

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cus were all basically a bunch of hive queens and Brood lords (well, seren's the only queen), so why not have some zerglings around :p

Ladder games are just called ladder games, they used to be called melee games in sc1/bw, but now its just ladder

I liked the cinematics, there was only 1 i had a problem with, and that was in hots

Seren and mark are in the clan, you can add them from there (you can also see the sc2 name on the forum on the side in the info under the avatar)

Giving mod powers on the forums isnt that hard, seren has it for most of the sections
You and mark had it when you were in the chief group
Right now the sc2 and wc3 chief groups will give anyone in them mod power, (the wc3 chief doesnt have mod power over the wc3 section and vice versa) but i could make another group
Slayer had mod power over the LoL section (he may still have it, i cant remember if i removed it), but that never went anywhere, and cd had mod power of the minecraft section since it was his server but since he never posted i gave it to seren instead
I just made a new group that has mod powers over everything, so i can just add people to that for moderators, but the forum really isnt big enough to need that many moderators

If you want to try to make the sc2 clan a big thing ill give you sc2 chief in both the forum and on sc2, if no one has any objections to it

The campaign uses units from sc1 and bw (and warhounds, which i think was supposed to be in sc2 ladder, but was taken out)
It does make learning sc2 ladder more difficult because things function differently in the campaign, but if those sc1/bw units werent there it would suck for sc1/bw fans

The AI isnt really the best way to learn
The AI dose some pretty predictable things, like you saw how i expanded at 9 supply as a zerg in that 1 game we played, if we were playing against real players they wouldve just rushed and killed us, the only reason i expanded that early was because i knew the AI wouldnt do something like that and that i was safe

If your still learning what all the units do for the race your playing then the AI is good for learning that, but once you know what all the units are capable of, what they counter, and what counters them the next thing you should learn is build order and the AI is a terrible way to learn build order because it wont respond to what your doing like a person would so your build order can be something crazy (like fast expand at 9 with no consequences) that wont work against players

Supply is like food from wc3, so 10/11 is 10 workers at the beginning of the game
A basic terran opening build order would be something like

10/11: Supply Depot
12/19: Barracks (scout the enemy base with a worker, make sure to keep it alive, if hes doing standard stuff then you can continue with this build order)
13/19: Refinery
15/19: Orbital Command (start marine production, or an addon to the barracks while this is going)
17/19: Supply Depot (the oribtal should finish after this so start muling, use mules as much as possible, try not to use energy on anything else until later in the game)

After that you can pick what you want to do and the order isnt as important as long as you keep making workers and spend your money
If you see the enemy doing something weird/non-standard when you scout them you might have to change to something else

Some tips

You dont have to do the build order i said every time, but it will give you a great start to the game with a lot of options to do next

Block the ramp to your base with buildings, to stop early aggression, 2 supply depots with a barracks in the middle should block the ramp completely if you place everything right (unless the ramp is large which shouldnt happen in 1v1, unless you want to block the ramp to the expansion which you can do later in the game)

Sometimes people (mainly zerg) will rush you really early (if your doing the build order i said your worker will meet up with their rush army somewhere between your base and theres unless theres mulitple paths)
If that happens block the front immediately get out at least 1 marine out asap and you should be able to stop them, pull a few workers from the mineral line if you need to repair
Dont go too crazy with your defense though cause once you have that 1 marine out they will probably just pull back (get another worker out of your base when you can to scout around so you can see if another wave of units is coming or not)

Try not to que up units in buildings, only have 1 or 2 qued up at any one time, spend the rest of the money on buildings/upgrades, but if you find yourself with a lot of extra money just dump it into unit ques and if you need money for something later cancel the last unit in the que

Always make workers, just keep making 1 at a time in each of your command centers, when 1 finishes make another
Expand when you have 20 or so on minerals at each base, since your new only expand once (so stop making workers when you have 2 full bases)
If you think you can handle more then 2 bases, then expand to 3 command centers, but dont go to 4 as terran, only have 3 mining command centers at any 1 time
You can build command centers in the safety of your base and then fly them to an expansion, which is a much safer way of expanding then building the center out side the safety of your base

Generally 1 full mining orbital command center can support just about any combination of 5 production buildings, so 5 barracks, or 3 baracks and 2 starports, or 2 barracks, 2 factories and 1 starport, etc
You need to be muling for 5 though, if you arent muling properly you can only support 4 per base (since your new i suggest only 4 per mining base since you probably wont be muling properly)
So with 2 full bases you should have 8 production buildings eventually, this wont work if your going for gas heavy units, if you want gas heavy units you can only support 3 production buildings per base

Dont just build up a large force and move out, try to poke at the enemy throughout the game, dont over extend though

Dealing with mineral line harassment is a pain, you will have to split your forces to do it effectively, most people will use mutas, reapers, void rays, drop ships, hellions, banshees, or blink stalkers to harass
Marines can deal with muta, voidrays, banshees and blink stalkers really well, just split up some of those so that you have 1 group to deal with the mineral line and 1 group set up on the escape path to catch them when they retreat
You will need to scan if its banshees
Hellions can just be blocked with buildings so it shouldnt be a problem for terran

Drop ships are the main concern because the enemy can drop anything into your base, get out a few vikings (2 or 3 should be enough) and set them up in areas where the drop ship will have to fly past so that you can catch them and kill them before or after they drop on you
Only use like a fifth of your army to respond to the drop in your base, that should be enough to shut it down and wont leave your front as vulnerable
You can also put up a missile turret or 2 behind your mineral line if air harass becomes a huge problem

You should be harassing the enemies mineral line too, reapers are probably the easiest way to harass but they do require a lot of micro
Banshees can turn invisible so they are really good vs toss and zerg as harass (especially zerg) but not so much against terran, they are harder to make but are easier to use then drop ships/hellions/reapers
Hellions are great vs zerg as well, just run past everything, get to the drones, and start roasting
Dont make too many banshees/hellions/reapers though because as an actual unit for your army they suck (hellions arent that bad and can be used if there are a lot of lings/zealots) but banshees and reapers will contribute very little in a real fight so only use those to harass
Terran is the best race for harassing so you should be doing it whenever you can

Scout with a worker or a marine as much as possible, later in the game you can scan the enemy base to see what they are doing
You can also scan the front of the base as well, most people will keep their army at the front
Use the xelnaga watch towers that are around the map

Dont be afraid to use buildings as walls, you can control the flow of units in your base by placing buildings in certain ways, since all of terran units have range you can shut down zealots and zerglings, even roaches, just by making your base a pain in the ass to move through, most of your buildings can lift off and supply depots can lower, so use supply depots as gates to let your units through when you need them to move through your base quickly (like when responding to harassment at the back of your base)
Dont bother doing this when your fighting terran though because you wont have any advantage

blizz just started a new thing where you can "spawn friends". for awhile now there's been a f2p sc2 edition which is extremely limited. Now the limits are mostly removed on bnet play as long as you join a party that has a friend leading it who also owns the game. Once in that party you can, as a group, play melee games as well as customs. the campaign is obviously locked. but in addition to that, if you decide to buy WoL, it'll only cost you $20. in short, hahahahha ach

Serenity09 wrote:

haha ach

'haha' nothing. i wouldn't want to only play games with friends. Especially if they're all better than me, cus i like working on things on my own, and sometimes i'll want to do 1vs1 ladder games and use the editor. i would'a used the free to play for a week or two max, then i probably would'a bought the game anyway, just like i did with the crack.

I almost feel like i should give you my cd key, though, seren. Just to slightly make up for the fact that i have virtually all your blizzard keys.

pat1487 wrote:

but the forum really isnt big enough to need that many moderators

true
My thought was that if we get more traffic than it might make sense to make the (6?) of us moderators so there's a structure that doesn't just go: everyoneelse => pat. an exaggeration, since from what you said some other peeps have mod powers on here.

pat1487 wrote:

If you want to try to make the sc2 clan a big thing ill give you sc2 chief in both the forum and on sc2, if no one has any objections to it

thanks. once i feel competent at everything ill talk to you again. I had always planned to make wc3 ladder important back in the day, but i spent all my time playing custom games.
not that getting good at custom games in sc2 instead of ladder would preclude a sc2 clan in any way--the analogue's not precise.

pat1487 wrote:

Block the ramp to your base with buildings

The one damned time i forget this is when you counter rush me and mark D:

pat1487 wrote:

If you think you can handle more then 2 bases, then expand to 3 command centers, but dont go to 4 as terran, only have 3 mining command centers at any 1 time

Do games not usually last long enough for 4 bases to be effective?
Or, if i get my APM way above the 30-35 its at right now, then does multitasking more bases become possible?
if you burn up all the minerals in a base and you just fly your main buildings over to the new mineral patch--is that still effective?

pat1487 wrote:

You need to be muling

yeah, i hadn't realized how effective mules are. since they're units i just assumed they'd cost minerals or gas to produce them, but its just energy so its stupid not to spam them.

pat1487 wrote:

Dont just build up a large force and move out, try to poke at the enemy throughout the game

yeah, i need to work at that

pat1487 wrote:

You can also put up a missile turret or 2 behind your mineral line if air harass becomes a huge problem

So, your saying to spam walls of turrets in a parameter around literally all my bases, right?

pat1487 wrote:

Use the xelnaga watch towers that are around the map

i really like those, it annoyed me that there was no good way of getting a decent amount of vision of the map in wc3.

Achilles.42 wrote:

The one damned time i forget this is when you counter rush me and mark D:

That rush was pretty good, you had more marines then i thought you would be able to make in that amount of time
Even if mark wasnt there, like if it was 1v1 and you rushed like that, and if you had blocked, i dont think i wouldve been able to stop that rush

I shouldve canceled my hatchery before it finished, i would have but you guys attacked at the same time i made a round of drones so i didnt have the larva to respond quickly enough at the start so i figured you would take the time to kill the hatchery out there which would give me enough time to get out my queen and get more larva, it would also give me larva at the other hatchery since it took you awhile before you killed it and larva sticks around until the creep recedes

But then i still didnt have enough larva to keep up with how many lings i was losing
Since it was 2 people i shouldve built at least 2 spine crawlers, probably 3, but again, i didnt think you would be able to make that much stuff, not only because your new, but also because i had lings in both your mineral lines

Achilles.42 wrote:

Do games not usually last long enough for 4 bases to be effective?
Or, if i get my APM way above the 30-35 its at right now, then does multitasking more bases become possible?
if you burn up all the minerals in a base and you just fly your main buildings over to the new mineral patch--is that still effective?

When i said you should only have 3 command centers, i mean you should only be mining from 3 places at the same time, so if you main base dries up and you were already mining from 3 places then your now only mining from 2 since 1 of them dried up, so you should make another or move to another to get back up to 3 and transfer all the workers to it

The reason you shouldnt go above 3 is because youll have too much of your supply in workers, 3 bases will mean you should have around 60-70 workers, which is 60 supply taken up by non combat units, if you have 4 bases going at the same time that will be around 80-90 supply in workers which only leaves you with about half of the rest of your supply for your army

Zerg can take 4 at a time, or even 5, because they can make units much much faster then terran/toss, so having that less supply doesnt really matter when they can reinforce it instantly

Achilles.42 wrote:

yeah, i hadn't realized how effective mules are. since they're units i just assumed they'd cost minerals or gas to produce them, but its just energy so its stupid not to spam them.

You can cast them directly on the minerals and they will mine that patch of minerals without any interaction from you
They can also repair, so you can cast them into the field to repair your units, but its usually a better idea to just have them mine

Do mules repair faster just like they mine faster?

So, i qualified for silver. How do those ranking systems work? i assume it goes bronze, silver, gold platinum?
I won 2 of the 5 games.
I should have won 3 out of 5, but i got screwed up by the shity Protoss rush the guy did in the beginning, party cus i got too distracted by dealing with the probe that was attacking my worker. I then played him again in my second match and beat him easily.

Every single one of the 5 games was against Protoss though. Is Protoss really popular?

EDIT: also, the second guy i beat was ranked gold. i felt good about myself.

Wait so you're actually good at this?

lol not really.
What mark, did you qualify into bronze? : P

My first match after i did my 5 placement matches at the end of it the guy said "FICK YOU GAY ASS HACKER"
Which i took as a complement.

EDIT: when are (roughly) days you can play mark?
Respect for summer school in college though. i wanted to get more ahead than i am, but i really didn't have the energy for it.

I have a midterm next week so I'm prob not going to be getting on. Afterwords I will.

marksoccer wrote:

I have a midterm next week so ... Afterwords I will.

so, after your midterm we'll see you from like 10-11 on some random night and then neveragain for a few months?
just like every other time?
cool. im looking forward to it.

---------------

Funniest game yet:

I was playing Terran vs Protoss (i was Terran) and i see the drone scouting my base, and running into a corner under fog of war.
I think, "no biggie. he's just making a pylon cuz he thinks he's gonna be able to warp rush my base. ill just get a marine up in a bit"
Then when i go in with my marine "OMFG THERE'S PHASE CANNONS THERE"
Me being hte idiot that i am didn't think to kill the single drone, but instead was trying to disable the pylon and towers while he was building them. Obviouselly the towers beat my marines and he was quickly expanding to my SCV's.
I was about to say "gg"
but then i was like "fuck this guy. towers cant flipping move. so i lift off with my barracks and orbital command (i upgraded my CC), and drop into the natural expansion.

i then sent the handful of marines i had trained that i hadn't kamikazed on the cannons at the Protoss' base.
He hadn't made any gateways yet, but he had expanded into the natural, which i killed, and moved up into his main.
i got a half dozeen pylons and such in his base before he just swarmed my 5 marines with his 50 workers and killed me that way.
By this time i had made banshees and more marines, and had constructed a barrocks in his natural (my 3rd barracks). He finally got some gateways and zealots up, but i had too many units at this point and just overwhelmed him.

I was proud of myself. moreso because i overcame my own noobness at the beginning from letting him build in my base at all--rather than because i played particularly well.

The protoss workers are called probes, not drones, zerg's workers are called drones
And in those 2v2 games thats why i would say "keep an eye on that probe" because cannon rushes happen a lot in low level play (which i assumed you knew since you never questioned why i said "keep an eye on that probe")

Also protoss cant warp rush, it takes too long to get warpgates up for the attack to be considered a rush
And you can stutter step with your marines to kill off 100s of workers with like 5 guys, just move back, stop so they fire once, and repeat that process until everything is dead