StarCraft II.
For almost a dozen years, you’ve been hanging on, wondering what the sequel to the genre-changing RTS would be like.
During that time, you’ve wondered how you’d fare against your online competition the moment you’d installed the game, applied the updates, and entered the churning, combat-laden froth that is Battle.net to find the worthy competition you hunger for.
Prior to logging in for the very first time to prove your mettle, we present 20 tips you need to know in order to both survive and flourish online in StarCraft II multiplayer gameplay. Set yourself apart from the newbie hordes!
Box 'em out.
You won’t be able to stop your opponents from charging your base early in the game, but if you’re playing as the Terrans, there is something you can do about it. As the game starts, quickly find any open entrances ground forces can use to attack your base and build a wall with bunkers and supply depots. This helps blocks off the entrance as well as allows you to build your supply depots to help support your growing army. Stock a few fully loaded bunkers with Marines and you can help shoot down any ground or air forces that come knocking on the front door as well.
Needs more cowbell.
They’re not as cheap or as quick to build as Marines, but they have their uses. Assembling a force of five or more Reapers will allow you to use their limited cliff-jumping ability to tear across the map and effectively raid your opponent’s base. “Hit and run” is the name of the game here, and while a small Reaper force can’t stand toe to toe with a base’s defenses, one effective move is to find your opponent’s mineral- and vespene-gas-mining efforts and decimate a large part of their work force before their military can react and come after you. Destructive and effective, these make for great harrying units in Battle.net gameplay.
The eye in the sky.
For you Zerg fans, the Overlord not only helps support a larger force, but also function as a great, if slow-moving, scout unit. Once the game begins, you can readily send an Overlord to fly over an enemy’s base and keep an eye on them. If you need to keep watch over enemy troop movements in the middle of the map, simply send an Overlord to the expansion points on the map to activate them and see what your neighbors are up to. The Overlord isn’t pretty, but it’s cheap and useful -- a floating eye comes in handy.
Two words: Void Rays. Perhaps the best weapon in the Protoss arsenal, Void Rays are worth the time and expense it takes to crank them out, and two or three of them are invaluable in supporting a ground force. Once deployed, get your Void Rays to a position outside the enemy’s base where they can warm up by picking off workers or external structures.
Mmm, Void Ray.
The lasers take a few seconds to warm up and inflict the maximum amount of damage on a single target at any given time, so don’t expect them to do a large amount of area damage, but a few of them can quickly annihilate an opposing unit within seconds before moving on to their next target. It’s death ray goodness at its best and yes, you knew this day would come…
Oh, hai.
It’s one of the stupidest offensive techniques in the game, but it has its uses. If you’re playing as the Protoss, it’s easy to take one of your Probe units at the beginning of the game, fly over near your enemy’s base and begin building units all of eight feet from their base while your main base harvests materials and gas. If done well, odds are you can do this in your opponent’s blind spot, sending roughly a dozen upgraded Protoss zealots to tear through their base before they can build an opposing force. It doesn’t work that often, but you’ll make your friends feel like twits if they fall for it. And that, like the Hokey Pokey, is what the game is all about.
I'm workin' here!
It doesn’t work often, but when it does, there are ample bragging rights to be had. At the beginning of a multiplayer match, you start off with six worker units (SCVs for the Terrans, Probes for the Protoss, and Drones for the Zerg). These units actually possess a mild attack ability and can be sent over to a neighbor’s base to attack their workers as they harvest minerals and build their base. It’s an idiotic technique, but if your units can corner your opponent’s lone worker and kill them off, you can win the game in under two minutes and keep mentioning it for the rest of the week…
Photo cannons make good neighbors.
Multiplayer battles in StarCraft II can drag on if you let them, but there are ways to make your opponents afraid to leave their base (or at least out the front entrance) while playing as the Protoss. Territory can be held and defended by planting energy pylons and building multiple photon cannons right outside the entrance to your opponent’s base. These cannons will attack both air and ground forces and can help buy you time to build a larger invasion force. Your opponent can still find other ways out of their base via air units, but this helps pin them down so you can make the final push into their base.
There is very, very little that doesn’t melt in front of dozens of upgraded Marine units. And you should remember this.
The many, the proud, the Marines.
Perhaps the best combination for a Terran base defense, Marine units are cheap and easy to train and can readily take down almost anything provided there are enough of them. This, combined with the fact that they make great invasion units, makes them among the most versatile units in the game. In short, crank them out, keep them in reserve to defend your base and when the time comes, send them along with a few tanks to either tear apart your opponent’s base or establish a front and hold it until other forces arrive.
As much as you may love playing the Terrans, the SCV worker units are initially slower to get harvesting minerals at the same pace as the Zerg and Protoss workers. This can be rectified with the help of S.M.U.L.E. units, robot workers that can be called down from orbit to harvest minerals faster than your standard SCV.
Rosie's got nothin' on these robots.
Once the game begins, quickly build a barracks, upgrade your command center and begin calling down S.M.U.L.E. units to close the financial gap until you can afford a sufficient number of workers. This will keep your forces growing at the same pace or faster than your opponents and S.M.U.L.E. units can be called in throughout the game to help provide an economic boost when needed.
Let the healing begin.
They may not be able to fight, but the Medevac units can make all the difference in terms of your army’s ability to get somewhere and stay healthy while doing it. The Terran Medevac units combines the abilities of a transport vehicle with a terrific automatic healing ray that seeks out any injured units in a given radius and boosts their health points. The end result is a vehicle that can drop ground troops or vehicles and then hang back while fighting occurs and patch up damage as it occurs. Not a bad thing if the odds are against you and backup forces are still being bought and trained halfway across the map…
Next Page: StarCraft II Tips Continued >>
MacAddict4Life
August 20, 2010 at 3:37pm
Gramatical errors, typos, superficial analysis, and a lack of understanding game mechanics (you mention overlord creep-pooping, but not creep tumors?)... Kind of unimpressive here...
hypersapien
August 20, 2010 at 2:57pm
Hey nice overview.
I don't know if you personally took these screen shots, but one of them shows your friend's username paired up with their first and last name. Just thought I'd mention it in case they are concerned about their privacy...
