Since allot of people are concerned about the new mechanics I thought it would be good to have one post were everyone who played the game can say how they felt.
-What did you think of the new macro mechanics (spawn larva, proton charge, mule)?
-What did you think of the macro casters (queen, obelisk, orbital command)?
-Were they fun to use?
-How often did you use them?
-What decision-making was involved with them?
- The new 150 mineral hatchery/anti air/tank that is the queen seemed broken. After you build your spawning pool you have access to make a queen through your hathery that doesn't require larvae to build. The queen doesn't have long build time and for 25 mana she adds 4 larvae to a hathery. She has a ranged attack that shoots air as well as ground. She had another ability as well but I didn't see much use for it. She can lay some kind of cacoon that speeds up nearby certain units (drones not included) on the creep. That whole package seems so much better compared to a 300 mineral in base hatchery.
-MBS..... was really helpful.However what was really annoying about it is that I couldn't find a way to set the default building. When I hit 55 to go back to my main it would end up going to some random hatchery.
-houseurmusic
- Obelisks are awesome, basically just make ur workers mine and gather way faster, and you can use it pretty common.
-Raydog
Things i didnt like though. The protoss proton charge thing just kinda seems like a gimick. I know its very useful but it doesnt feel like it belongs. Same with calling down mules. I didnt play with the zerg so idk about their larva thing. I feel that just because theres less macroing, you shouldnt replace that with awkward mechanics that dont seem to fit and dont really need to be there. Thats just me tho.
-pzea469
Everything is really starting to come together, and things just feel great. The units look good, the controls feel good, and the macro mechanics require attention without feeling tedious.
-Thingdo
On August 24 2009 03:35 Archerofaiur wrote: Since allot of people are concerned about the new mechanics I thought it would be good to have one post were everyone who played the game can say how they felt.
-What did you think of the new macro mechanics (spawn larva, proton charge, mule)? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spawn larva was probably the largest impacting of the macro mechanics. A zerg without a queen spawning larva will not be able to keep up with his minerals. I used the mule a lot, but I just summoned it and turned away so I didn't really see how much that impacted my economy.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -What did you think of the macro casters (queen, obelisk, orbital command)? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The queen was pretty cool. A nice early defensive unit who can constantly spawn larva on your hatchery. She has some other skills too, but I never used them.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -Were they fun to use? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The queen was sometimes frustrating when my opponent managed to run in my base and assassinate her because then I'd have about half the larva until another one hatched.
-How often did you use them? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Constantly. The moment I finished my barracks or spawning pool, I'd upgrade my CC or start building a queen at my hatch. The queen, every single time I noticed that i had 4-5 larva at my hatchery I would tell my queen to make more, which would take another 30 seconds. There was no limit to her energy if all you did was make larva. The obital command I spawned a Mule every time it had 50 energy unless I couldn't get a scout in their base in which case I'd save for a scan. If they were teching to DTs or something I'd just purely save energy for scans until I could get a detector (raven).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -What decision-making was involved with them? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the queen, I really couldn't see any decision making. Spawn larva constantly, or go home. For the orbital command, you need to decide when to get money and when you have a comsat station. If you accidently get supply locked, you can use it on a supply depot to up your supply by 6. I didn't play toss much, but the obelisk also works as a shield battery for shields or energy, which I could only see being used to help against rushes.
-Alienalias
Like i said in my great wall o' text in the other topic, I played all 3 races throughout blizzcon, and i'm pretty sure every match-up at least twice, some a lot more.
Lets get down to the questions:
-What did you think of the new macro mechanics (spawn larva, proton charge, mule)?
Larva - in general, i'd like to know how long it takes for a larva to respawn. I found myself constantly spamming ssssss just because I didn't know the time tables. Now with the queen, that lady is just sick NASTY. If you have say an expo and your main, be prepared to make waypoints for her going back and forth casting W (the skill that allows 4 or so extra larva to hatch) for the duration of the game. One game I accidentally made 2 queens, which was kind of a benefit because my opponent had sneaked in a spire and I didn't notice it. I'd say 3 hatcheries can work well with 1 queen, and any higher might require 2 queens (depending on how far the hatchs are from each other). I can see this being used as a standard unit in high competitive play.
Proton Charge (I assume the obelisk thing) is pretty nifty as well. As protoss, I found myself Constantly reminding myself to use my obelisks at my expo and main. No complaints, they are quite useful. There wasn't a cooldown on the spell, so you could just keep using it until the energy ran out, which would eventually rejuvenate.
Mule, didn't really like it. after reading these above posts, it could be used as a scout yes, but only on areas that are currently visible, so you'd have to already have a unit in the opponent's base. For fun, (when the game was clearly decided) I brought down a mule or two into battle I got a lol out of my opponent. But only 1 worker unit doesn't make as big of an economy difference as all your workers moving faster, or way more larva. But while playing terran, I felt that I didn't need those extra econ-boosters like the proton charge/more larva. I still was able to contain and outmass my opponents using 1 base dual rax m&m&m and eventually some hellions/tanks.
-What did you think of the macro casters (queen, obelisk, orbital command)?
For the Queen & Obelisk, if they aren't being hotkeyed, they aren't being utilized. I constantly found myself while in battle, double 4 (my hotkey for queen/obelisk) used the skill, double tap 1 and go back to battle. I got quite fast at it. With the mule, I'd use it if I wasn't busy doing something else. it costed a lot of energy for 1 worker unit, whereas the queen skill uses literally half the energy for 4 larva.
-Were they fun to use?
queen less than three. Obelisk was like giving temporary ling speed to probes.
-How often did you use them?
Kinda answered this earlier, Queen & Obelisk almost all the time. always used queen (never ran out of energy on 2 hatch), Obelisk i'd use every so often. Mule didn't really use.
-What decision-making was involved with them?
I think with the queen, the decision making would be on whether or not you can support those extra larva. If you barely have enough minerals to pump out units as it is with 3 larva, 4 more won't do anything. Or if you are stuck on food and 4 more larva come out at a crucial time, doesn't really help (had this happen to me once), was zvp i think. I lost most of my lings & he lost most of his units and i used banelings to blow up some of his econ. If I had made lings with all of those larva I would have won, but unfortunately "not enough overlords" TT
1 thing that messed me up was Probe keybind is E, not P. Mixed me up haha
-Raydog
In my opinion, macro was definitely not on par with SC Broodwar. I played zerg almost exclusively throughout the day, and I simply hotkeyed all of my hatcheries to 4, and during any fight, just pressed 4 zzzzzzzzzzuuuuuuuuuddddddddd and all of my units then rallied to where they needed to go.
I must say however, that the game was very fluid, and very welcoming to use. While macro in SC2 is still lacking, after trying out mbs for a while, it is very hard to go back. Blizzard will have to find more innovative ways to bring macro to the forefront.
It was also good to see how Blizzard implemented the automated building queue. This is how it works: Say you have an SCV, and you want to build 3 supply depots. As soon as you tell it to build a depot, your 100 minerals are automatically deducted. You are refunded as soon as you tell the scv to move. Now if you want to use the auto build queue, you can also tell the scv to build more supply depots, while its building the first one. If you do this, the cost is deducted as soon as you give the order to build or queue up. It allows for ease of use if you are a casual gamer, but punishes you by taking away minerals that you could have used for something else.
The one thing i could live without; however, was automine. While convenient, it wasn't necessary. I will be writing a long article tomorrow that will go in depth about SC2.
Lastly, let me end by saying SC2 is going to be awesome. The last game I played was a 50 minute ZvP going back and forth over 1 expo, and it was amazing.
-HDStarcraft
a lot of the new macro mechanics seem like they're going to be really interesting in terms of build order.
Most of the pro players (nada, savior) were playing P. imo, P is the most similar to sc1 units, and the progamers would like that because...well, they can't read english.
the queen basically gives you another hatch, and allows zerg to have way way too many larvae. Hotbid loved 1 hat hydra, and it seemed really really broken. Zatic (i think?) tried forge first fe, and hotbid had 30 hydra in front of P's base when the third cannon (before nex) finished.
I tried 1 base T against hotbid's Z, and I think that you could marine in bunker to fend off early agression, into sieged tank in mineral line. that assumes that you scout 1 hat 1 base hydra, and forces you to not be able to upgrade the mule. It didn't work for me though, as i accidently walled off my tank from my mineral line.
in general, the major takeaway point that i got from the sc2 stuff was that it still feels like sc. MBS and automine felt like they didn't really lower the skill ceiling, and it didn't really affect the game that much. I'm more worried about the hard counters of the game - 8 micro'd thors get trashed by 48 lings >.> and thors are something like 200 min 300 gas..?
It's a good build order macro mechanic. at the pro level, it's just going to be another task, and they'll have the timing down perfectly. It should make the build orders quite interesting, with the choices between the dark pylon thing, the gas's, and unit/gateway tech choice.
Charge btw (i saw this earlier in the thread) seems way too expensive, at something like 200 min 200 gas. Marine maruder is really good against protoss - as it's the easiest way to play, it feels like it's also the weakest.
you can build as many as you want i think. It feels like the optimal number (depending on base distances) is going to be 1 for every 2 hatches. The "increase larvae" mechanic requires the queen to be at a new hat once every 20 seconds. So if your queen can get to your nat in 10 seconds, and then back, you can spawn new larvae every 20...Although i bet you run into a mana problem.
for us anyway, it looked like you needed 1 queen per hat optimal.
well, because the queens give you so many larve, you can make it so that you reach saturation really really quickly. The hatches work a lot more like nex/cc's in that they allow you to get access to more patches/gas, and there are so many larvae that zerg can just get much much more supply. Apparently, chill/hotbid compared supply earlygame, and zerg was at like 60, and T was at 40 (I think? anyone can correct me if necessary).
-GHOSTCLAW
I didn't get a whole lot of use out of mules because I always needed the energy for scans and none of my games went past 2 bases. It's impossible to keep an scv alive against zerglings on creep, and you're obviously not going to get any scouting done when speed finishes. Against protoss, dts are bitches without spider mines so scans are important. Actually, in the first game I really wanted to test mules, I used my first 50 energy on one and promptly got raped by a warp prism + dt warp-in. Fun times. If you don't need energy for scanning late game or you have a bunch of bases, you can make mules, but how useful are they at that point?
The queen spawn larvae ability was extremely useful. I don't know why everyone has been complaining about zerg because I found them to be very good. You can power drones so easily with queens and still be relatively safe, then run over your opponent mid game.
The obelisk was ok as well. It didn't really feel like a chore, and they definitely pay for themselves quickly. It's a good enough idea that opens up different build orders and keeps you from being able to play the game without ever looking back at your base, which was the point of the macro mechanics.
-ShadowDrgn
1. One Hatch is a very legitimate strategy for both teching and rushing, which gives zerg an incredible power to change things in a blink of an eye and keep opponent guessing. This is mainly due to the power of the queen and her larva spawn and grows extremely powerful as the number of queens and hatcheries grows. The ability to save up an extreme amount of larva forces the opponents of zerg to constantly scout, because playing in the dark vs these versatile zergs is asking to get run over.
-Pufftrees
I played all three races, and of the macro mechanics I agree - the queen is definitely the most overpowered and absolutely necessary for successful games. Terran and Protoss don't necessarily need an orbital command or an obelisk right away. In fact, by skipping it you essentially put yourself in a position to make a very successful early-game timing attack, as both are rather expensive and won't reward you until the mid game. But Zerg absolutely needs a queen. Right after the spawning pool, in every single game. Or they will lose. Not only does the queen cost less than the obelisk or orbital command (I think), she gives the zerg something that neither of the other races get, extra units at the same time as your current units. The mutant larvae ability is just sooo key to keep up in macro with either of the other races. In fact, during mid and late game it really shines - if you three-hatch in base with a queen it's basically like you have 6 hatches. In games I played against zerg that got to mid game it almost seemed broken, as the sheer amount of units the zerg can build is so massive that it's really, really hard to keep up without running off of one or more extra bases ahead of the zerg.
Mainly I played protoss and the obelisk, I thought, was almost too easy to use. I would make one after the cybernetics core usually, or after the second or third gate, and if you can keep using it all game it would really allow the protoss to pull ahead. It cost 200 minerals, and allows all the units on your line and at your gas to take one extra mineral or gas per trip - so you start bringing in 6 minerals at a time and 4 gas at a time per probe. Therefore, it takes 200 mineral gathering trips to pay for itself. However, receiving gas 33% faster for the rest of the game is pretty important, especially because of my next opinion:
Gas is the deciding macro factor, at least for protoss and terran. To me, it really seemed like zealots and marines and hellions - gasless units - are very underpowered, even after upgrades. I won a game as terran with over 3000 minerals left, only building good units when I had enough gas to do so. The obelisk for protoss seemed to really even resources out, and I had less of a problem balancing minerals and gas as that race. It really seemed to me like terran needs a macro mechanic that will help both mineral income and gas income all at once, like the obelisk does for protoss.
-Meta
Slashdot: There has been some talk that the streamlining of commands has been moving the focus away from actions per minute [APM]. How important is APM as a metric for you and will we see a decline in the importance of this metric?
Dustin Browder: That type of feedback is incredibly important for us. We want players making smart decisions all the time and we want a lot of skill required to play this game at the highest levels. We absolutely want the best players to be the best players. We're not looking to even out or flatten the skill curve so that "everybody can be a winner." This is not the first grade. We want this to be tennis, baseball, football, whatever, we want this to be a game that requires real skill. But at the same time we don't want this to be a bunch of bogus skill. We have definitely gotten rid of some clicks, but we have also added some clicks back in. We got rid of some clicks in terms of how you had to select your buildings and how you had to give build commands, but we also made sure that we had the finest amount of control at the same time.
When we originally put it out there we said you could double-click the barracks and hit 'M,' and you get five marines, one from each barracks for instance. The fans were outraged and we kind of ignored them, saying, "Whatever, this is a better gameplay experience," but as we played it, we realized that it wasn't a better gameplay experience. Maybe when you hit 'M,' what you really wanted was three marines and two marauders, and you couldn't do that. Instead we have said you can select all of your barracks at once, but each click sends a build command individually to each of those barracks. So now you are able to hit "M, M, M, D, D." This gave us a decent amount of clicks, but actually the correct amount of control. That's actually the control you wanted as a player. We weren't looking to hurt you by giving you too many clicks or hold your hand by taking away some of the gameplay experience. We were actually giving you the controls that made you powerful by having the correct balance between the two.
Also we have a bunch of macro mechanics in the game to encourage players to control their economy better, because as you know in Starcraft, economy is king. One of the things that we loved about the original Starcraft was not so much that we want you to click a bunch, but that there was a lot of tension between players who were micro-oriented and players who were economy-oriented. For instance, if you are playing Zerg and are micro-oriented and I'm playing Zerg and I'm economy-oriented, we're kind of playing two different races — not exactly, but a little bit. We're having a very different experience, and that style difference now becomes the interesting problem for both of us, and that is what we're really pursuing with a lot of this stuff. So, we've definitely taken some clicks away, but we have added some back, and I think the fans will be fine with it. Certainly the hardcore fans I've spoken with, who have actually had a chance to play the game, seem to be very positive about the experience.
-Dustin Browder
SC2 was really fun, but i feel their may be a few advantages to races such as protoss, who have the thing that instantly sends reinforcements. I feel blizzard has done a good job on making the game and wont stop untill all of the races are perfectly balanced. The Graffics are great, The new upgrades are fun, The new Units are awesome but not very micro intensive, like losingID8 said the protoss macro late game is very easy, the games go much faster also because you can pump out units much faster and upgrade your workers to mine faster or carry more minerals. I really think they should nerf protoss a bit and make zerg a little better, the coloses for protoss is very good and requires no micro to kill up 15 units alone, MORE WORK ON ZERG. Otherwise great game and i overexagerated on how much they should nerf protoss.
-Installit
What did you think of the new macro mechanics (spawn larva, proton charge, mule)?
i mainly played zerg at blizzcon after building a queen for the first time because spawn larva is off the wall insane good
-What did you think of the macro casters (queen, obelisk, orbital command)?
the queen seems way stronger than both the obelisk and the orbital command. the queen keeps your options open and allows you to punish your oponnents weakness in their build order. with only costing 150 minerals you get a unit that can defend or be offensive and it can spawn 4 larva whenever, lol wut? the queen i believe was created so that a zerg player could keep up 1 base vs 1 base but it actually puts you ahead always, which doesnt seem fair
-Were they fun to use?
not really, it felt like i was cheating
-How often did you use them?
anytime casting spawn larva was possible
-What decision-making was involved with them?
do i need to build 4 more units per hatchery? oh, i do? ok.
-CheeC[h]
The Orbital Command definitely forced you to balance between the MULE and SCAN and the supply depot made terran a more forgiving race. Can't really say they were very enjoyable; however, they definitely add depth.
-fnaticAugury
What did you think of the new macro mechanics (spawn larva, proton charge, mule)?
I think they work quite well. I only played a limited amount of the game (like everyone else here), so I'm not going to give it final judgment like many seem to be doing.
-What did you think of the macro casters (queen, obelisk, orbital command)?
To be honest I always forgot to make my queen. I played all my games without her (or I built her during mid game and was too busy doing other stuff to use her abilities). That being said, I beat every guy I face at the community tournaments with a makeshift 2-3 hatch muta and early zergling harass.
-Were they fun to use?
I killed other people's Queens quite quickly with just 5 mutas, they really aren't intimidating defenders, so I'm glad they aren't like heroes in that sense
-How often did you use them?
barely ever, because I was so new to the game
-What decision-making was involved with them?
im sure there will be many, but really I had such a limited time with the game that I don't feel comfortable commenting I was very scared of SC2 and I didn't like a few things I saw in gameplay videos. However, after actually playing it for a bit, I was very pleased that this game is going to be very much life Starcraft:BW, but the new units and abilities are going to change the game into a newer, more interesting experience.
All the new abilities were very intimidating and I didn't know when to use them and didn't have time to think of strategies besides those I knew from BW. I don't feel anyone here has the right to talk about how balanced this game is when they only played a limited amount of time of the game and against players who had no idea how to bring all the new content together into solid strategies/counters.
All I can really say is that the game feels very nice, it's simple, and yet the depth is clearly there. It feels overwhelming, and some of the units seem uselss with so many new options, but this is simply because people still see it as an edited version of brood war, as opposed to a new game.
Can't wait to play the beta ^_^
oh, and in the brief time I used them, siege tanks were very effective.
I actually loved the double gas mechanic they implemented. It really helps the macro game IMO.
-eMbrace
Q: Are the macro mechanics working like expected, or do they get too repetitive after a while? What about their mineral-only aspect? Does that work late game, or the mineral-only units are getting smashed by superior tech, anyways? Won't the mineral/gas ratio skew gameplay to basic units and static defenses?
A: One thing I did not like about the game how it is, is the fact that while playing Protoss and using PC I got a TON of minerals, like a LOT!! And I could make a bajillion Zealots, Terrans "Mule calldown" is almost counter productive, you have to pay 150 minerals to have your command center stop doing anything for about 60 seconds at least just to upgrade to Orbital Command.
As for is the new econ stuff just a APM sink or is it effective, Mule felt like an APM sink because you didn't feel the minerals coming in, I'm sure you got a more then usual amount but you don't feel it, and hitting 1, E, and clicking on a mineral field is hardly APM sink. For PC you REALLY feel it, it adds 1 mineral for each trip for your probes, and it shows a LOT. Protoss gets so much more minerals than the other races (at least early-mid to early late game) that if you got the obalisk rather quickly for PC than you would basicly win every time because you can now make 1 Zealot for every 2 zerglings or 2 marines.
That being said it felt like since the Mule calldown was so poor for mineral gain, the Terran was VERY behind on the economy race. Zerg has the larva spawn which gets expansions up in about 3 seconds, and Protoss can kill people with numbers alone. I did actually test this theory and my body was able to make as ALMOST as many Zealots as I has marines in the space of about 10 minutes, Terran Econ just feels realllly slow, and it hurts them a lot because their units are not all that strong, and the new pathing helps melee units a lot.
As for gas, once you got an expansion or 2 it wasn't to too bad, it did feel just about balanced. What they need to do though it either take out PC, Mule, and possibly larva spawn out completely, or take a hard look at balancing the fact that Protoss can produce as much as Terran, but all their units are at least double the strength.
-Supersonic
yeah, honestly terran macro felt a lot like war3. Let the workers work, and just have all your production buildings hotkeyed and just tab through them to keep makin units
yeah I never meant to say it as a problem, just as a (what I consider myself to be) experienced war3 player, It was strikingly similar. The only difference is that when you have say 3 Raxs in a group, you have to hit mmm to make 1 marine in each rax. Whereas in war3 if you want to make a sorceress at each arcane sanctum, and both are in a group, just have to hit s once.
I like this macro in sc2 a lot more than original sc. I just wanted to say what it reminded me of, never meant to say it like it was a problem.
-Raydog
Protoss mechanic is the easiest to use (LoL). And it's also the most evident, that's why I played like 65% of the games with toss at blizzcon (out of like 30 games?).
The Mule calldown did seem a lot shittier, for the aforementioned reasons (Does the mule actually mine more per trip? I didn't really pay attention), and also that when you call it down, it takes like 3 seconds to hit the floor. Then you need to tell it to mine. Compared to Z or P you just click the unit/bldg and hit the hotkey and it's basically done. (well for zerg you have to wait a bit and then larva pop out but that's ok, it's like it doubles your hatch)
The main thing that pissed me off with this build is just the 'fix' to prevent easy macro since it's all MBS. On one hand its really good because you don't accidentally build 3 overlords when you just want 1 or two. You can designate how many according to how many times you press O once your hatches are selected. But on the other hand it makes zerg macro SOooooo much worse compared to protoss. Especially if you plan to make banelings or lurkers, because each ling/hydra also needs to upgraded 1 at a time when mass selected.
This was also kind of annoying when there were multiple structures selected that had minor differences. Example: Terran fortress thing and the terran comscan/mule thing if you had these upped and your CCs were all 1 hotkey it won't build SCV out of other CCs, just the ones that took priorty. So instead of making 3 scv- one at each base it would make 3 at the fortress. So in other words, to keep the game mechanically easier its probably actually better to avoid the CC upgrades and shit like that if you can (this is bad for game design if they actually want people to use the stuff they worked so hard on). And same thing applied to barracks with addons or whatever bldg that had a modifier or upg. So like 3 normal barracks, one with a tech lab, and one with a reactor and you try to make a marine for all of them and you only get 5 marines at the tech lab or something. edit- you might have been able to tab through structures like you can in wc3 but I didn't try that and that sucks ass anyways, just adds even more clicks which is especially bad for zerg imo. As it is now zerg requires like 5x the macro which totally sucks since they have fragile/melee units.
They both have their uses. Warp Gates I found to be a pain in the ass to use because every unit you throw down deselected your gates or something and I wasn't able to reproduce the videos where they throw down like units like bam,bam,bam bam in rapid succession. In summary they require more macro to use and they shut down your production for a while (while upgrading). So it's not ideal to rush to even in the early game unless your strategy is going to exploit their mobility or something.
Just like I said in the above post, it's probably actually better to not even get them at all because the same reason as the CC upgrade. Mechanically, gateways are easier to use for late game macro especially.
They were really fucking good however, to have units appear right in battle or with a proxied pylon in the enemy base warping in DTs. It's fucking rape. So like I said, if your strat requires the warp gates then yea, get them, if not, you're probably better off sticking to regular gates. What did you think of the new macro mechanics (spawn larva, proton charge, mule)?
Easiest/Best to Worst: Protoss,Zerg,Terran It is a good mechanic and fun to use. It requires timing and skill just like making more workers all the time does.
-What did you think of the macro casters (queen, obelisk, orbital command)?
Isn't this the same question as above? First couple of games I forgot to use the queen and my 9pool/speed (which I tried like 3 times) got stomped horribly vs 2 gate zeal. So it is important to say the least. The toughest decision is just when to start the macro up, with zerg it's easier because you get the defense unit but for terran or toss you need a certain amount of workers to decide when it is optimal to build the thing. And the dark pylon actually needs a regular pylon to power it so usually that required me to build a pylon near my nexus first since my first one was usually near my ramp or something. (so 300 mins and some time before it kicks in)
-Were they fun to use?
yea they were, I guess I answered this in the first one as well.
-How often did you use them?
A lot, it is important to use this as much as possible once you have it, to gain that macro edge in your game.
-What decision-making was involved with them?
Usually I played a standard BW BO then after a little harassment or early game skirmishing and more worker production and money (especially when you have more workers to benefit from proton charge) then I built the orbital command or dark obelisk. It totally felt much more important to get the +1 return on all your probes faster than to get up a faster tech/cyber core or something.
the proton charge was also the best because it wasn't a fixed bonus, you could use it on 1 or 100 workers, so just before u transfer to ur nat you boost them up. More larva or Mule don't have any gain obviously for something like this.
well for protoss probably about the same , it does depend if you are using warp gates however, as they require additional macro. For zerg it totally feels like you need way way more macro because you can't select a hatch and SD once to make 3 drones and in fact need to select queen and do the spawn mutant larva. So instead of 3x4 of SD we have; q- ability x4, then hotkey(3) sd,d,d,d,d,d,d,d,d,d,d,d, and even more if your trying to make lurkers or banelings because once you have your 12 lings/hydras you gotta select the group and go Lx12. I think this is a bit of a problem and might be imbalanced mechanically. But Like I said before it is great if you need to just make 1 overlord or pair of scourge (which isn't in the game) so you don't overcreate units.
-CharlieMurphy
Calling down mules onto mineral patches worked just fine. As for MBS with buildings with different add-ons/upgrades, you can tab through them. That wasn't very convenient for marines though, which frustrated me a lot.
On August 24 2009 03:35 Archerofaiur wrote: Since allot of people are concerned about the new mechanics I thought it would be good to have one post were everyone who played the game can say how they felt.
-What did you think of the new macro mechanics (spawn larva, proton charge, mule)?
Spawn larva was probably the largest impacting of the macro mechanics. A zerg without a queen spawning larva will not be able to keep up with his minerals. I used the mule a lot, but I just summoned it and turned away so I didn't really see how much that impacted my economy.
-What did you think of the macro casters (queen, obelisk, orbital command)?
The queen was pretty cool. A nice early defensive unit who can constantly spawn larva on your hatchery. She has some other skills too, but I never used them.
-Were they fun to use?
The queen was sometimes frustrating when my opponent managed to run in my base and assassinate her because then I'd have about half the larva until another one hatched.
-How often did you use them?
Constantly. The moment I finished my barracks or spawning pool, I'd upgrade my CC or start building a queen at my hatch. The queen, every single time I noticed that i had 4-5 larva at my hatchery I would tell my queen to make more, which would take another 30 seconds. There was no limit to her energy if all you did was make larva. The obital command I spawned a Mule every time it had 50 energy unless I couldn't get a scout in their base in which case I'd save for a scan. If they were teching to DTs or something I'd just purely save energy for scans until I could get a detector (raven).
-What decision-making was involved with them?
For the queen, I really couldn't see any decision making. Spawn larva constantly, or go home. For the orbital command, you need to decide when to get money and when you have a comsat station. If you accidently get supply locked, you can use it on a supply depot to up your supply by 6. I didn't play toss much, but the obelisk also works as a shield battery for shields or energy, which I could only see being used to help against rushes.
On August 24 2009 04:09 AlienAlias wrote: For the queen, I really couldn't see any decision making. Spawn larva constantly, or go home. For the orbital command, you need to decide when to get money and when you have a comsat station. If you accidently get supply locked, you can use it on a supply depot to up your supply by 6. I didn't play toss much, but the obelisk also works as a shield battery for shields or energy, which I could only see being used to help against rushes.
See what I mean, Archer? The OC's abilities balance eachother out well, while the other two are lacking. The Queen and Obelisk need to be more like the OC in terms of having abilities that require you to make critical decisions between them and not just spam one over and over again. Proton Charge and Additional Larvae aren't bad but they both need something to balance against.
Something else to note is that a Terran can only afford so many OCs, since they are around 500 minerals each (I don't remember the exact cost). Zerg and Protoss can build far more Queens and Obelisks respectively, which seems to make it too easy.
Honestly, I think macro mechanics should be more like enhancements and less like necessities.
On August 24 2009 04:09 AlienAlias wrote: For the queen, I really couldn't see any decision making. Spawn larva constantly, or go home. For the orbital command, you need to decide when to get money and when you have a comsat station. If you accidently get supply locked, you can use it on a supply depot to up your supply by 6. I didn't play toss much, but the obelisk also works as a shield battery for shields or energy, which I could only see being used to help against rushes.
See what I mean, Archer? The OC's abilities balance eachother out well, while the other two are lacking. The Queen and Obelisk need to be more like the OC in terms of having abilities that require you to make critical decisions between them and not just spam one over and over again. Proton Charge and Additional Larvae aren't bad but they both need something to balance against.
Something else to note is that a Terran can only afford so many OCs, since they are around 500 minerals each (I don't remember the exact cost). Zerg and Protoss can build far more Queens and Obelisks respectively, which seems to make it too easy.
Honestly, I think macro mechanics should be more like enhancements and less like necessities.
Even if it gives you slight advantage it becomes a necessity in a extremely competitive game like Starcraft. I don't see that changing anytime soon.
On August 24 2009 04:09 AlienAlias wrote: For the queen, I really couldn't see any decision making. Spawn larva constantly, or go home. For the orbital command, you need to decide when to get money and when you have a comsat station. If you accidently get supply locked, you can use it on a supply depot to up your supply by 6. I didn't play toss much, but the obelisk also works as a shield battery for shields or energy, which I could only see being used to help against rushes.
See what I mean, Archer? The OC's abilities balance eachother out well, while the other two are lacking. The Queen and Obelisk need to be more like the OC in terms of having abilities that require you to make critical decisions between them and not just spam one over and over again. Proton Charge and Additional Larvae aren't bad but they both need something to balance against.
Something else to note is that a Terran can only afford so many OCs, since they are around 500 minerals each (I don't remember the exact cost). Zerg and Protoss can build far more Queens and Obelisks respectively, which seems to make it too easy.
Honestly, I think macro mechanics should be more like enhancements and less like necessities.
Even if it gives you slight advantage it becomes a necessity in a extremely competitive game like Starcraft. I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Eh good point. Still, they need mechanics that are well balanced against eachother.
I mostly tried zerg so I'll mostly comment on Queen:
Spawn larvae is way too good. Good to the point there's absolutely no reason you wouldnt want to use her ability everytime she has 25 energy. At first, I thought ''hey this ability is cool'', but really, in the end I don't think this adds much to the game, other than having to absolutely do this mandatory gimmicky move every 25 secs, or else you fall behind. It doesnt add depth to the zerg race or it doesnt give more options to the player, which is the big problem. If spawn larvae would cost minerals, gas, or if you'd have to sacrifice a unit to gain energy with the Queen for example (consume?), I think this ability would be less broken.
The same comment could probably made about mule and obelisk also, but I havent played the other races much.
On August 24 2009 07:03 lepape wrote: At first, I thought ''hey this ability is cool'', but really, in the end I don't think this adds much to the game, other than having to absolutely do this mandatory gimmicky move every 25 secs,
Just a side comment. This is the psychological part of the game design that facinates me. For instance lets say High Templar in SC1 could autocast psi storm. Would manual psi storm suddenly feel gimmicky?
Spawn larvae is way too good. Good to the point there's absolutely no reason you wouldnt want to use her ability everytime she has 25 energy. At first, I thought ''hey this ability is cool'', but really, in the end I don't think this adds much to the game, other than having to absolutely do this mandatory gimmicky move every 25 secs, or else you fall behind. It doesnt add depth to the zerg race or it doesnt give more options to the player, which is the big problem.
Thats how i felt about Proton Charge for Protoss, its a gimmicky thing u have to do every 25 seconds to not fall behind. And it adds absolutely no depth imo. When i would play without using it, i kept feeling like i should be, in order to get the most out of my workers. So on top of adding no depth it makes u feel forced to use it which i dont find too good.
Just a side comment. This is the psychological part of the game design that facinates me. For instance lets say High Templar in SC1 could autocast psi storm. Would manual psi storm suddenly feel gimmicky?
I see what ur saying but i dont think thats the case. Because you only use storm when u want to. And u want to make it a well placed storm in order to get the most out of it. Plus you might choose not to build high temps in the first place. With the mechanics, sure u dont HAVE to use them, but ur basically dumb if u dont. If u dont build an Obelisk its a bad decision. And completely different from a storm, which u would think about when to use and how to use it, the mechanics are meant be used as soon as there is enough energy, over and over again.
Just a side comment. This is the psychological part of the game design that facinates me. For instance lets say High Templar in SC1 could autocast psi storm. Would manual psi storm suddenly feel gimmicky?
I see what ur saying but i dont think thats the case. Because you only use storm when u want to. And u want to make it a well placed storm in order to get the most out of it. Plus you might choose not to build high temps in the first place. With the mechanics, sure u dont HAVE to use them, but ur basically dumb if u dont. If u dont build an Obelisk its a bad decision. And completely different from a storm, which u would think about when to use and how to use it, the mechanics are meant be used as soon as there is enough energy, over and over again.
So in that respect its kinda like making supply. A continous task you have to do to keep up with the opponent.
Like i said in my great wall o' text in the other topic, I played all 3 races throughout blizzcon, and i'm pretty sure every match-up at least twice, some a lot more.
Lets get down to the questions:
-What did you think of the new macro mechanics (spawn larva, proton charge, mule)?
Larva - in general, i'd like to know how long it takes for a larva to respawn. I found myself constantly spamming ssssss just because I didn't know the time tables. Now with the queen, that lady is just sick NASTY. If you have say an expo and your main, be prepared to make waypoints for her going back and forth casting W (the skill that allows 4 or so extra larva to hatch) for the duration of the game. One game I accidentally made 2 queens, which was kind of a benefit because my opponent had sneaked in a spire and I didn't notice it. I'd say 3 hatcheries can work well with 1 queen, and any higher might require 2 queens (depending on how far the hatchs are from each other). I can see this being used as a standard unit in high competitive play.
Proton Charge (I assume the obelisk thing) is pretty nifty as well. As protoss, I found myself Constantly reminding myself to use my obelisks at my expo and main. No complaints, they are quite useful. There wasn't a cooldown on the spell, so you could just keep using it until the energy ran out, which would eventually rejuvenate.
Mule, didn't really like it. after reading these above posts, it could be used as a scout yes, but only on areas that are currently visible, so you'd have to already have a unit in the opponent's base. For fun, (when the game was clearly decided) I brought down a mule or two into battle I got a lol out of my opponent. But only 1 worker unit doesn't make as big of an economy difference as all your workers moving faster, or way more larva. But while playing terran, I felt that I didn't need those extra econ-boosters like the proton charge/more larva. I still was able to contain and outmass my opponents using 1 base dual rax m&m&m and eventually some hellions/tanks.
-What did you think of the macro casters (queen, obelisk, orbital command)?
For the Queen & Obelisk, if they aren't being hotkeyed, they aren't being utilized. I constantly found myself while in battle, double 4 (my hotkey for queen/obelisk) used the skill, double tap 1 and go back to battle. I got quite fast at it. With the mule, I'd use it if I wasn't busy doing something else. it costed a lot of energy for 1 worker unit, whereas the queen skill uses literally half the energy for 4 larva.
-Were they fun to use?
queen less than three. Obelisk was like giving temporary ling speed to probes.
-How often did you use them?
Kinda answered this earlier, Queen & Obelisk almost all the time. always used queen (never ran out of energy on 2 hatch), Obelisk i'd use every so often. Mule didn't really use. -What decision-making was involved with them?
I think with the queen, the decision making would be on whether or not you can support those extra larva. If you barely have enough minerals to pump out units as it is with 3 larva, 4 more won't do anything. Or if you are stuck on food and 4 more larva come out at a crucial time, doesn't really help (had this happen to me once), was zvp i think. I lost most of my lings & he lost most of his units and i used banelings to blow up some of his econ. If I had made lings with all of those larva I would have won, but unfortunately "not enough overlords" TT
1 thing that messed me up was Probe keybind is E, not P. Mixed me up haha
edit: sidenote, we should have one of these topics on micro, I got some stuff to say about that.
Just a side comment. This is the psychological part of the game design that facinates me. For instance lets say High Templar in SC1 could autocast psi storm. Would manual psi storm suddenly feel gimmicky?
I see what ur saying but i dont think thats the case. Because you only use storm when u want to. And u want to make it a well placed storm in order to get the most out of it. Plus you might choose not to build high temps in the first place. With the mechanics, sure u dont HAVE to use them, but ur basically dumb if u dont. If u dont build an Obelisk its a bad decision. And completely different from a storm, which u would think about when to use and how to use it, the mechanics are meant be used as soon as there is enough energy, over and over again.
Yeah but quite frankly what most of us were concerned about was the drop in tasks. Putting your workers on minerals could be called tedious, but it adds to the macro feel of the game. They've taken that out and stealth put in something that's pretty similar. They've given us what we wanted with enough of a smokescreen that journalists and noobs wont notice.
Yeah, in many ways yeah. It just seems to add another mandatory thing. But at least with the supply you are to build more as a direct consequence to building more units. It just seems deeper and not awkward. With the mechanics its a timed thing. No matter what, u gotta be there in 25 seconds(an example, idk how long the wait time is) or expect to be behind.
My main argument though is that i just dont feel like it belongs in the game. Others may disagree and i know the game isnt being developed around how i feel but yeah. Just my two cents
Yeah, in many ways yeah. It just seems to add another mandatory thing. But at least with the supply you are to build more as a direct consequence to building more units. It just seems deeper and not awkward. With the mechanics its a timed thing. No matter what, u gotta be there in 25 seconds(an example, idk how long the wait time is) or expect to be behind.
My main argument though is that i just dont feel like it belongs in the game. Others may disagree and i know the game isnt being developed around how i feel but yeah. Just my two cents
No I see your point (trust me your not alone). Im just trying to understand the psychology of it. For instance you say that supply depot are directly connected to building more units. But so are minerals. Minerals + supply + production slot = unit. The time thing is an interesting observation. Is thier a difference between casting a mechanic every 40 seconds and building a supply about every 40 seconds?
Oh and guys if were going to have a macro discussion lets keep it civil. Weve been over these things so much that we can at least tell that both sides have valid points
No I see your point (trust me your not alone). Im just trying to understand the psychology of it. For instance you say that supply depot are directly connected to building more units. But so are minerals. Minerals + supply + production slot = unit. The time thing is an interesting observation. Is thier a difference between casting a mechanic every 40 seconds and building a supply about every 40 seconds?
Well idk, i guess theres a thin line, since building units is also a timed thing. But you still have options in that. Sometimes its to ur benefit not to build another zealot after the last and save the minerals to build something else. With the obelisk, its never a good idea to skip its use. Theres no benefit to that. And in using it, theres no consequence, just pure benefit.
Hmmm u know it seems to me like a big problem i have with the mechanics is that it uses its own recourse, its energy. So since its not costing YOU as the player anything to use it, its just dumb not to. Even building a probe sets u back initially. Theres no choice.
In my opinion, macro was definitely not on par with SC Broodwar. I played zerg almost exclusively throughout the day, and I simply hotkeyed all of my hatcheries to 4, and during any fight, just pressed 4 zzzzzzzzzzuuuuuuuuuddddddddd and all of my units then rallied to where they needed to go.
I must say however, that the game was very fluid, and very welcoming to use. While macro in SC2 is still lacking, after trying out mbs for a while, it is very hard to go back. Blizzard will have to find more innovative ways to bring macro to the forefront.
It was also good to see how Blizzard implemented the automated building queue. This is how it works: Say you have an SCV, and you want to build 3 supply depots. As soon as you tell it to build a depot, your 100 minerals are automatically deducted. You are refunded as soon as you tell the scv to move. Now if you want to use the auto build queue, you can also tell the scv to build more supply depots, while its building the first one. If you do this, the cost is deducted as soon as you give the order to build or queue up. It allows for ease of use if you are a casual gamer, but punishes you by taking away minerals that you could have used for something else.
The one thing i could live without; however, was automine. While convenient, it wasn't necessary. I will be writing a long article tomorrow that will go in depth about SC2.
Lastly, let me end by saying SC2 is going to be awesome. The last game I played was a 50 minute ZvP going back and forth over 1 expo, and it was amazing.
On August 24 2009 07:50 HDstarcraft wrote: In my opinion, macro was definitely not on par with SC Broodwar. I played zerg almost exclusively throughout the day, and I simply hotkeyed all of my hatcheries to 4, and during any fight, just pressed 4 zzzzzzzzzzuuuuuuuuuddddddddd and all of my units then rallied to where they needed to go.
I must say however, that the game was very fluid, and very welcoming to use. While macro in SC2 is still lacking, after trying out mbs for a while, it is very hard to go back. Blizzard will have to find more innovative ways to bring macro to the forefront.
It was also good to see how Blizzard implemented the automated building queue. This is how it works: Say you have an SCV, and you want to build 3 supply depots. As soon as you tell it to build a depot, your 100 minerals are automatically deducted. You are refunded as soon as you tell the scv to move. Now if you want to use the auto build queue, you can also tell the scv to build more supply depots, while its building the first one. If you do this, the cost is deducted as soon as you give the order to build or queue up. It allows for ease of use if you are a casual gamer, but punishes you by taking away minerals that you could have used for something else.
The one thing i could live without; however, was automine. While convenient, it wasn't necessary. I will be writing a long article tomorrow that will go in depth about SC2.
Lastly, let me end by saying SC2 is going to be awesome. The last game I played was a 50 minute ZvP going back and forth over 1 expo, and it was amazing.
No I see your point (trust me your not alone). Im just trying to understand the psychology of it. For instance you say that supply depot are directly connected to building more units. But so are minerals. Minerals + supply + production slot = unit. The time thing is an interesting observation. Is thier a difference between casting a mechanic every 40 seconds and building a supply about every 40 seconds?
Well idk, i guess theres a thin line, since building units is also a timed thing. But you still have options in that. Sometimes its to ur benefit not to build another zealot after the last and save the minerals to build something else. With the obelisk, its never a good idea to skip its use. Theres no benefit to that. And in using it, theres no consequence, just pure benefit.
Hmmm u know it seems to me like a big problem i have with the mechanics is that it uses its own recourse, its energy. So since its not costing YOU as the player anything to use it, its just dumb not to. Even building a probe sets u back initially. Theres no choice.
I recongnize your point. Thats were most of these macro debates go: to the theoretical diferences. So yes while a probe does require some choice for when to build the big picture is that your still building probes repeatedly just like using the obelisk. I am not sure which matter more, the minor but theoretical differences or the big picture how it plays feeling.
No I see your point (trust me your not alone). Im just trying to understand the psychology of it. For instance you say that supply depot are directly connected to building more units. But so are minerals. Minerals + supply + production slot = unit. The time thing is an interesting observation. Is thier a difference between casting a mechanic every 40 seconds and building a supply about every 40 seconds?
Well idk, i guess theres a thin line, since building units is also a timed thing. But you still have options in that. Sometimes its to ur benefit not to build another zealot after the last and save the minerals to build something else. With the obelisk, its never a good idea to skip its use. Theres no benefit to that. And in using it, theres no consequence, just pure benefit.
Hmmm u know it seems to me like a big problem i have with the mechanics is that it uses its own recourse, its energy. So since its not costing YOU as the player anything to use it, its just dumb not to. Even building a probe sets u back initially. Theres no choice.
I recongnize your point. Thats were most of these macro debates go: to the theoretical diferences. So yes while a probe does require some choice for when to build the big picture is that your still building probes repeatedly just like using the obelisk. I am not sure which matter more, the minor but theoretical differences or the big picture how it plays feeling.
When you build a probe you are losing minerals to start with to eventually produce more minerals faster than you could if you didn't have that probe, its an initial set-back that has long term benefits. When you build a supply depot you lose minerals and have to stop mining with an scv to build it, when you expand you are putting yourself at a disadvantage for the time being because of the economic advantage you will have later, these are all give and take things that must be balanced appropriately or you will become overwhelmed by your opponent, and whoever balances them best will almost always come out the victor.
By making an ability that will always allow you to mine more minerals faster without any consequences or always produce more units without any consequences, there is no balance, its simply a forced task you must complete to stay level with your opponent. If you make it cost minerals or force you in some other way to initially put yourself at a disadvantage for a long term gain, than that is an ability worth having in a competitive game. If you put tasks in a game where you must always perform them for the best outcome, you are taking much of the strategy out of a strategy game.
No I see your point (trust me your not alone). Im just trying to understand the psychology of it. For instance you say that supply depot are directly connected to building more units. But so are minerals. Minerals + supply + production slot = unit. The time thing is an interesting observation. Is thier a difference between casting a mechanic every 40 seconds and building a supply about every 40 seconds?
Well idk, i guess theres a thin line, since building units is also a timed thing. But you still have options in that. Sometimes its to ur benefit not to build another zealot after the last and save the minerals to build something else. With the obelisk, its never a good idea to skip its use. Theres no benefit to that. And in using it, theres no consequence, just pure benefit.
Hmmm u know it seems to me like a big problem i have with the mechanics is that it uses its own recourse, its energy. So since its not costing YOU as the player anything to use it, its just dumb not to. Even building a probe sets u back initially. Theres no choice.
I recongnize your point. Thats were most of these macro debates go: to the theoretical diferences. So yes while a probe does require some choice for when to build the big picture is that your still building probes repeatedly just like using the obelisk. I am not sure which matter more, the minor but theoretical differences or the big picture how it plays feeling.
When you build a probe you are losing minerals to start with to eventually produce more minerals faster than you could if you didn't have that probe, its an initial set-back that has long term benefits. When you build a supply depot you lose minerals and have to stop mining with an scv to build it, when you expand you are putting yourself at a disadvantage for the time being because of the economic advantage you will have later, these are all give and take things that must be balanced appropriately or you will become overwhelmed by your opponent, and whoever balances them best will almost always come out the victor.
By making an ability that will always allow you to mine more minerals faster without any consequences or always produce more units without any consequences, there is no balance, its simply a forced task you must complete to stay level with your opponent. If you make it cost minerals or force you in some other way to initially put yourself at a disadvantage for a long term gain, than that is an ability worth having in a competitive game. If you put tasks in a game where you must always perform them for the best outcome, you are taking much of the strategy out of a strategy game.
at least thats my opinion
Building the obelisk is akin to expanding. Its an initial investment that will reward you later. You have to decide if you wish to spend the minerals on units, on probes, on tech, or on an obelisk so that you can use the photon charge that will allow your probes to mine faster later on.
No I see your point (trust me your not alone). Im just trying to understand the psychology of it. For instance you say that supply depot are directly connected to building more units. But so are minerals. Minerals + supply + production slot = unit. The time thing is an interesting observation. Is thier a difference between casting a mechanic every 40 seconds and building a supply about every 40 seconds?
Well idk, i guess theres a thin line, since building units is also a timed thing. But you still have options in that. Sometimes its to ur benefit not to build another zealot after the last and save the minerals to build something else. With the obelisk, its never a good idea to skip its use. Theres no benefit to that. And in using it, theres no consequence, just pure benefit.
Hmmm u know it seems to me like a big problem i have with the mechanics is that it uses its own recourse, its energy. So since its not costing YOU as the player anything to use it, its just dumb not to. Even building a probe sets u back initially. Theres no choice.
I recongnize your point. Thats were most of these macro debates go: to the theoretical diferences. So yes while a probe does require some choice for when to build the big picture is that your still building probes repeatedly just like using the obelisk. I am not sure which matter more, the minor but theoretical differences or the big picture how it plays feeling.
When you build a probe you are losing minerals to start with to eventually produce more minerals faster than you could if you didn't have that probe, its an initial set-back that has long term benefits. When you build a supply depot you lose minerals and have to stop mining with an scv to build it, when you expand you are putting yourself at a disadvantage for the time being because of the economic advantage you will have later, these are all give and take things that must be balanced appropriately or you will become overwhelmed by your opponent, and whoever balances them best will almost always come out the victor.
By making an ability that will always allow you to mine more minerals faster without any consequences or always produce more units without any consequences, there is no balance, its simply a forced task you must complete to stay level with your opponent. If you make it cost minerals or force you in some other way to initially put yourself at a disadvantage for a long term gain, than that is an ability worth having in a competitive game. If you put tasks in a game where you must always perform them for the best outcome, you are taking much of the strategy out of a strategy game.
at least thats my opinion
ye cause theres none of this in sc. Things that they force u to do so u can get ahead of ur opponent.
Well I would say the biggest decision I had to make about the queen was whether to do a hatch first FE build or a pool first build. If you think about the queen opens the door to a lot of interesting builds/strategies much like terran's salvage ability.
-MBS..... was really helpful.However what was really annoying about it is that I couldn't find a way to set the default building. When I hit 55 to go back to my main it would end up going to some random hatchery.
I gave read 2 different reports of how this works exactly. The first claimed that camera goes to the closest building to your current view And the second claimed that it goes to the biggest cluster of selected buildings.
On August 24 2009 09:57 owlman wrote: It seems that you need less expo to build up a large army in sc2 ,isn'it ? In that case you'll got no disavantage staying in your main/natural base
its impossible to judge that until we've played ;D
On August 24 2009 09:01 houseurmusic wrote: Well I would say the biggest decision I had to make about the queen was whether to do a hatch first FE build or a pool first build. If you think about the queen opens the door to a lot of interesting builds/strategies much like terran's salvage ability.
I found that the Queen made FE much less viable in SC2, simply because of course you need spawning pool to make her, then she acts as a second hatchery herself pretty much, allowing 4 extra larvaes/25 seconds or so (idk how it compares to the production rate of an hatchery), and the early pool allows you to put pressure on your opponent on top of that, only for 50 minerals more (250+150 vs 350 mins).
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't think of any situation where hatch first would be better than pool first.
On August 24 2009 09:01 houseurmusic wrote: Well I would say the biggest decision I had to make about the queen was whether to do a hatch first FE build or a pool first build. If you think about the queen opens the door to a lot of interesting builds/strategies much like terran's salvage ability.
I found that the Queen made FE much less viable in SC2, simply because of course you need spawning pool to make her, then she acts as a second hatchery herself pretty much, allowing 4 extra larvaes/25 seconds or so (idk how it compares to the production rate of an hatchery), and the early pool allows you to put pressure on your opponent on top of that, only for 50 minerals more (250+150 vs 350 mins).
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't think of any situation where hatch first would be better than pool first.
Well Hatch first would be better if you wanted to have an expansion early.... a Second hatchery in your base though... that is no longer good.
Questions for those who played the blizzcon build
Is there a limitation on how many Queen's you can build (besides the mineral+supply cost)?
One Queen can continuously spawn larva on two hatcheries and not run out of energy?
Does the Proton charge Stack? (if you cast it twice immediately on probes to they get a longer duration than if you cat it once?)
It does seem like Mule-Comsat is the only balanced one... although that will become clear in the beta.
The Queen's heal+Creep colony can probably be balanced by lower energy costs
The Obelisk's other abilities seem less balancable given their limited range.
a lot of the new macro mechanics seem like they're going to be really interesting in terms of build order.
Most of the pro players (nada, savior) were playing P. imo, P is the most similar to sc1 units, and the progamers would like that because...well, they can't read english.
the queen basically gives you another hatch, and allows zerg to have way way too many larvae. Hotbid loved 1 hat hydra, and it seemed really really broken. Zatic (i think?) tried forge first fe, and hotbid had 30 hydra in front of P's base when the third cannon (before nex) finished.
I tried 1 base T against hotbid's Z, and I think that you could marine in bunker to fend off early agression, into sieged tank in mineral line. that assumes that you scout 1 hat 1 base hydra, and forces you to not be able to upgrade the mule. It didn't work for me though, as i accidently walled off my tank from my mineral line.
in general, the major takeaway point that i got from the sc2 stuff was that it still feels like sc. MBS and automine felt like they didn't really lower the skill ceiling, and it didn't really affect the game that much. I'm more worried about the hard counters of the game - 8 micro'd thors get trashed by 48 lings >.> and thors are something like 200 min 300 gas..?
On August 24 2009 08:06 LosingID8 wrote: the queen makes zerg broken.
protoss macro when you get to late game is so ridiculously easy, it's kind of funny.
Did you use the obelisk? What was your impression: Chore or Awesome?
It's a good build order macro mechanic. at the pro level, it's just going to be another task, and they'll have the timing down perfectly. It should make the build orders quite interesting, with the choices between the dark pylon thing, the gas's, and unit/gateway tech choice.
Charge btw (i saw this earlier in the thread) seems way too expensive, at something like 200 min 200 gas. Marine maruder is really good against protoss - as it's the easiest way to play, it feels like it's also the weakest.
Well Hatch first would be better if you wanted to have an expansion early.... a Second hatchery in your base though... that is no longer good.
Questions for those who played the blizzcon build
Is there a limitation on how many Queen's you can build (besides the mineral+supply cost)?
None that I know of. I built around 5 one match just because I knew I was going to lose and wanted to try it.
you can build as many as you want i think. It feels like the optimal number (depending on base distances) is going to be 1 for every 2 hatches. The "increase larvae" mechanic requires the queen to be at a new hat once every 20 seconds. So if your queen can get to your nat in 10 seconds, and then back, you can spawn new larvae every 20...Although i bet you run into a mana problem.
for us anyway, it looked like you needed 1 queen per hat optimal.
On August 24 2009 09:01 houseurmusic wrote: Well I would say the biggest decision I had to make about the queen was whether to do a hatch first FE build or a pool first build. If you think about the queen opens the door to a lot of interesting builds/strategies much like terran's salvage ability.
I found that the Queen made FE much less viable in SC2, simply because of course you need spawning pool to make her, then she acts as a second hatchery herself pretty much, allowing 4 extra larvaes/25 seconds or so (idk how it compares to the production rate of an hatchery), and the early pool allows you to put pressure on your opponent on top of that, only for 50 minerals more (250+150 vs 350 mins).
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't think of any situation where hatch first would be better than pool first.
Well Hatch first would be better if you wanted to have an expansion early.... a Second hatchery in your base though... that is no longer good.
The main advantage of going FE is to get more larvae so you can build more workers, and since mineral saturation is not such a big deal early game, Queen can now accomplish that almost just as well.
I think FE would only be viable for gas heavy builds so you can get 3rd and 4th gas asap, then tech to lair for mutas or infestors most probably.
I didn't get a whole lot of use out of mules because I always needed the energy for scans and none of my games went past 2 bases. It's impossible to keep an scv alive against zerglings on creep, and you're obviously not going to get any scouting done when speed finishes. Against protoss, dts are bitches without spider mines so scans are important. Actually, in the first game I really wanted to test mules, I used my first 50 energy on one and promptly got raped by a warp prism + dt warp-in. Fun times. If you don't need energy for scanning late game or you have a bunch of bases, you can make mules, but how useful are they at that point?
The queen spawn larvae ability was extremely useful. I don't know why everyone has been complaining about zerg because I found them to be very good. You can power drones so easily with queens and still be relatively safe, then run over your opponent mid game.
The obelisk was ok as well. It didn't really feel like a chore, and they definitely pay for themselves quickly. It's a good enough idea that opens up different build orders and keeps you from being able to play the game without ever looking back at your base, which was the point of the macro mechanics.
On August 24 2009 09:01 houseurmusic wrote: Well I would say the biggest decision I had to make about the queen was whether to do a hatch first FE build or a pool first build. If you think about the queen opens the door to a lot of interesting builds/strategies much like terran's salvage ability.
I found that the Queen made FE much less viable in SC2, simply because of course you need spawning pool to make her, then she acts as a second hatchery herself pretty much, allowing 4 extra larvaes/25 seconds or so (idk how it compares to the production rate of an hatchery), and the early pool allows you to put pressure on your opponent on top of that, only for 50 minerals more (250+150 vs 350 mins).
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't think of any situation where hatch first would be better than pool first.
Well Hatch first would be better if you wanted to have an expansion early.... a Second hatchery in your base though... that is no longer good.
The main advantage of going FE is to get more larvae so you can build more workers, and since mineral saturation is not such a big deal early game, Queen can now accomplish that almost just as well.
I think FE would only be viable for gas heavy builds so you can get 3rd and 4th gas asap, then tech to lair for mutas or infestors most probably.
well, because the queens give you so many larve, you can make it so that you reach saturation really really quickly. The hatches work a lot more like nex/cc's in that they allow you to get access to more patches/gas, and there are so many larvae that zerg can just get much much more supply. Apparently, chill/hotbid compared supply earlygame, and zerg was at like 60, and T was at 40 (I think? anyone can correct me if necessary).
The terran macro mechanic is kind of a joke compared to protoss/zerg. Terran gets one mule that can harvest twice as fast as a normal SCV and being unable to use comsat, whereas protoss basically gets all of their guys harvesting twice as fast for just plopping down obelisks and zerg gets the equivalent of a current one hatch build giving them 2 hatch worth of larvae.
Unless you want to just randomly build multiple command centers and get all of them the orbital command upgrade.
No I see your point (trust me your not alone). Im just trying to understand the psychology of it. For instance you say that supply depot are directly connected to building more units. But so are minerals. Minerals + supply + production slot = unit. The time thing is an interesting observation. Is thier a difference between casting a mechanic every 40 seconds and building a supply about every 40 seconds?
Well idk, i guess theres a thin line, since building units is also a timed thing. But you still have options in that. Sometimes its to ur benefit not to build another zealot after the last and save the minerals to build something else. With the obelisk, its never a good idea to skip its use. Theres no benefit to that. And in using it, theres no consequence, just pure benefit.
Isn't that exactly the same thing with automining? I mean, in SC1 there was absolutely no benefit not to go back every few seconds and send your new built worker to mine minerals. Now they implemented automining and you don't have to do this anymore. A new player will only go a few times back to his base and where he in SC1 would have sent his workers to the minerals, he will now use one of the new mechanics. If you are a better player you can go back to your base on a more regular basis and keep those mechanics on cooldown/energy limit and benefit more than a player who doesn't do that. That's basically what a macro mechanic is all about, I guess.
old macro mechanic was just because of a bad UI... (no MBS, no automine)
so we have these two things now, but we still need something to make the game physically challenging.
Right now SC2 is asking the player to use an ability for most efficient resources. With critiques saying this task is pointless. Do you have to look at your base to use a dark pylon (I don't think so)
ok: Old macro = looking at your base for pointless actions New macro = should be looking at your base for meaningful action
Maybe there should be a "training station" a small building. One SCV goes in and comes out with faster mining ability for X amount of time. Or even like military training and you can do the same for units, but the key is that this is going on in your base maintaining the macro demand.
Another approach would be to keep the base maintenance easy, but advance the players ability to both attack and defend multiple locations. Units specifically for hit and run.
Question to all Blizzcon goers: From what I can gather from this thread, it seems to me that the general complaint is that the cost effectiveness of using the new macro mechanics was too simply good in comparison to simply building a second expansion? Do you have any ideas as to how to fix it so that a 2 base build has clear strategic differences from one of the resource accelerator builds?
Purely based on reading this threads it seems like the consensus is zerg has it right and protoss/terran have it wrong at the moment, but I might be misreading this.
On August 24 2009 19:50 Zanno wrote: Question to all Blizzcon goers: From what I can gather from this thread, it seems to me that the general complaint is that the cost effectiveness of using the new macro mechanics was too simply good in comparison to simply building a second expansion? Do you have any ideas as to how to fix it so that a 2 base build has clear strategic differences from one of the resource accelerator builds?
The queen may seem like an ecconomical choice, but its really not. You can pump drones faster, but once your mineral line and gas lines are at full saturation it is not helping to increase your ecconomy. It does however allow you to spend money more quickly because you have faster eggs.
I know that at least in SC1 minerals were not that big a problem. But thats because we were expanding for gas anyway and ended up with more minerals than we found nessessary at times. Your first expansion litterally doubles your mineral and gas intake potential. A queen does neither. It just lets you pump drones faster.
During later play i'd expect hatch-queen-hatch-queen being the most optimal way to expand on ecconomy and lava count. But in the early game, (altho I think it is likly that taking a queen before second hatchery will be the most ecconomical route)... there is still the chance that if you want a very gas heavy build, or to set up for a later macro advantage than getting a second hatchery down quick will still be very important.
It will be interesting to see how hatch-hatch-queen-queen compares to hatch-queen-hatch-queen for various builds.
And it will be interesting to see how long builds with differing levels of agression will be able to stay at one base before the mining cap becomes to great and they are forced to expand just to survive. Mid-game one base may even be considered an all in approach, because if you don't pull off enough the damage to your oponents econ with your high unit production, you will simply not have the mineral/gas intake to keep up in the late game.
Building the obelisk is akin to expanding. Its an initial investment that will reward you later. You have to decide if you wish to spend the minerals on units, on probes, on tech, or on an obelisk so that you can use the photon charge that will allow your probes to mine faster later on.
Yeah i understand that, but the problem is after building it. There is no reason to not use proton charge as soon as its available again. I know some are comparing it to making probes right after the last one is finished, but for example, you can cut probe production to focus more on units. For proton charge there is NO reason that i can think of where u wouldnt use it.
Do you have to look at your base to use a dark pylon (I don't think so)
Im pretty sure u do, i played at blizzcon and after selecting proton charge you then have to click on where it should be used. So you have to click in the area where all ur probes are. Proton charge only works on probes right? Anyone?
Hey, be sure to keep the terminology straight guys. Even though Proton Charge allows you to get minerals faster, remember that what it is actuallydoing is allowing probes to take more minerals pertrip -- neither moving faster nor mining faster.
On August 25 2009 00:25 pzea469 wrote: Proton charge only works on probes right? Anyone?
Are you asking if it works on SCVs and Drones? If so, interesting question. I'll add that to a list of questions to ask the Blues today.
Had an amazing Blizzcon, thanks to the TL staff and other volunteers for everything they did.
Alright, I played about 30 games this weekend exclusively with Zerg. During the first day, a majority of my games were in the 20 minute section which means that I was basically stomping noobs. Any game vs an Iccup hardened toss or terran seemed like an uphill battle at first, and I took some losses there. After each game waiting in line I tried to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of Zerg which I will get into shortly.
Thanks to Chill, Kennigit and other TL I was able to hang in the press area of SC2 and watch them play. After the Ozzy concert I returned here and the guy at side just let me in. I was chatting with the 2 guys wearing the "SC2 Development Team" shirt... and after bullshitting for a few minutes I asked... "have you gotten to play much today?". One of them responded saying " I wish", and at this time there were open computers in press area. His coworker told him to go play me and he would watch floor... so I got a 1v1 with a real developer! See spoiler for game description.
He was toss.. I was zerg ofc. I definitely played the best game of the weekend against him. I went for a 1 base ling + hydra speed early aggression. He was teching to stalkers and had his mains choke blocked off. I was able to break the pylon and put some good damage on his front, but he pushed me back. At this point I took my natural (which was pretty risky in sc2), and was going to lair tech. He was trying some cutesy toss air harassment while I had him mildly contained... but hydras with speed were more than enough for base defense.
Around this time I had a nydus canal built and was spewing creep into his base. As my offensive canal was being built in his base he discovered it and took it out with a few zealots before I was able to punish him. I yelled NUUU and he laughed, as we both chuckled across from each other. By this time though I had 2 bases with 2 queens and a massive economy going. With spire up I went with a muta harass on his main plus hydra bust on his recently formed natural. My hydras were wiped out but the damage was done. He had a few air units in my base as a last ditch effort, but I produced a few corrupters which owned them.
He typed the "gg " High 5 to myself! Of course it was his only and first game of the day and he admitted he was bad... but I did beat a dev!
Ok now my thoughts on the zerg.
1. One Hatch is a very legitimate strategy for both teching and rushing, which gives zerg an incredible power to change things in a blink of an eye and keep opponent guessing. This is mainly due to the power of the queen and her larva spawn and grows extremely powerful as the number of queens and hatcheries grows. The ability to save up an extreme amount of larva forces the opponents of zerg to constantly scout, because playing in the dark vs these versatile zergs is asking to get run over.
2. Ultralisks are extremely potent. In a game vs Fudd (which he won) a group of 15 marines were in my base just as an Ultra spawned. This Ultra with ZERO backup, and zero upgrades (not even normal ones) proceeded to steamroll the pack of rines. He lived with just a small amount of health but truly shows how powerful these guys are, especially vs tier 1 units. Fanaticist spoke to me about how he had close to 100 rines + multiple medivac support and was run over by 4 ultras with no support.
3. Mutalisks are still powerful and a viable strategy, but without clumping they lose some edge. Also they "feel" slow in comparison to others.
4. The Nydus Canal + the Overlords ability to crap out creep is an amazingly fun strategy. Any game that went over 10 minutes I was trying this. I would build the nydus canal and have my main scouting overlord sneak some creep in the sides of opponents base. In fact.. of all my games only the one vs the dev was this found out and stopped before the backdoor rush came. Suiciding waves of speedlings into their base can really end the game quickly.
5. Burrowed lings are even more useful as a defensive scouting strategy. With great mobility from many units such as reapers, warpgates, nydus canal... it is even more important to monitor the map. Of course this is primary roll of overlords but they can be taken out rather quickly. Lings are quite cheap obviously and having them burrowed around the map as scouts will make or break a game vs an equally skilled opponent who plans to use aggressive harassment.
I have more to say about the zerg as it is only race I played, but this is all for now. I feel a well played zerg is the scariest opponent because of their ability to adapt so quickly due to queens ability to stack/save larva.
I played all three races, and of the macro mechanics I agree - the queen is definitely the most overpowered and absolutely necessary for successful games. Terran and Protoss don't necessarily need an orbital command or an obelisk right away. In fact, by skipping it you essentially put yourself in a position to make a very successful early-game timing attack, as both are rather expensive and won't reward you until the mid game. But Zerg absolutely needs a queen. Right after the spawning pool, in every single game. Or they will lose. Not only does the queen cost less than the obelisk or orbital command (I think), she gives the zerg something that neither of the other races get, extra units at the same time as your current units. The mutant larvae ability is just sooo key to keep up in macro with either of the other races. In fact, during mid and late game it really shines - if you three-hatch in base with a queen it's basically like you have 6 hatches. In games I played against zerg that got to mid game it almost seemed broken, as the sheer amount of units the zerg can build is so massive that it's really, really hard to keep up without running off of one or more extra bases ahead of the zerg.
Mainly I played protoss and the obelisk, I thought, was almost too easy to use. I would make one after the cybernetics core usually, or after the second or third gate, and if you can keep using it all game it would really allow the protoss to pull ahead. It cost 200 minerals, and allows all the units on your line and at your gas to take one extra mineral or gas per trip - so you start bringing in 6 minerals at a time and 4 gas at a time per probe. Therefore, it takes 200 mineral gathering trips to pay for itself. However, receiving gas 33% faster for the rest of the game is pretty important, especially because of my next opinion:
Gas is the deciding macro factor, at least for protoss and terran. To me, it really seemed like zealots and marines and hellions - gasless units - are very underpowered, even after upgrades. I won a game as terran with over 3000 minerals left, only building good units when I had enough gas to do so. The obelisk for protoss seemed to really even resources out, and I had less of a problem balancing minerals and gas as that race. It really seemed to me like terran needs a macro mechanic that will help both mineral income and gas income all at once, like the obelisk does for protoss.
On August 24 2009 09:01 houseurmusic wrote: Well I would say the biggest decision I had to make about the queen was whether to do a hatch first FE build or a pool first build. If you think about the queen opens the door to a lot of interesting builds/strategies much like terran's salvage ability.
I found that the Queen made FE much less viable in SC2, simply because of course you need spawning pool to make her, then she acts as a second hatchery herself pretty much, allowing 4 extra larvaes/25 seconds or so (idk how it compares to the production rate of an hatchery), and the early pool allows you to put pressure on your opponent on top of that, only for 50 minerals more (250+150 vs 350 mins).
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't think of any situation where hatch first would be better than pool first.
A heavy macro strat such as dual queen with sunken protection at nat. (very similar to a 3 hatch build in the original)
On August 25 2009 02:21 Meta wrote: It really seemed to me like terran needs a macro mechanic that will help both mineral income and gas income all at once, like the obelisk does for protoss.
WOAH
Are you saying the Proton Charge helped gas collection too?!
On August 24 2009 16:54 General Nuke Em wrote: The terran macro mechanic is kind of a joke compared to protoss/zerg. Terran gets one mule that can harvest twice as fast as a normal SCV and being unable to use comsat, whereas protoss basically gets all of their guys harvesting twice as fast for just plopping down obelisks and zerg gets the equivalent of a current one hatch build giving them 2 hatch worth of larvae.
Unless you want to just randomly build multiple command centers and get all of them the orbital command upgrade.
Yea, except its 6x a normal SCV and lasts longer than the Protoss ability, meaning you have some overlap where two MULEs are mining at once.
On August 24 2009 16:09 GHOSTCLAW wrote: well, because the queens give you so many larve, you can make it so that you reach saturation really really quickly. The hatches work a lot more like nex/cc's in that they allow you to get access to more patches/gas, and there are so many larvae that zerg can just get much much more supply. Apparently, chill/hotbid compared supply earlygame, and zerg was at like 60, and T was at 40 (I think? anyone can correct me if necessary).
This is the most horrible thing I have heard about SC2 so far. So, basically zerg is building hatches to acquire more resources, and queens to produce units? hatches = CC/Nex queens = Gate/Rax From what I read that is what makes the most sense because queens seem to spawn a ton of larvae for a lot less money than an equivalent in hatches.
The different production mechanics in SC1 imo are what makes zerg unique. At least it's one of the most important aspects. And now zerg becomes more and more similar to t/p? Say what you want about those new mechanics, but taking away the uniqueness of zerg SUCKS.
On August 24 2009 16:09 GHOSTCLAW wrote: well, because the queens give you so many larve, you can make it so that you reach saturation really really quickly. The hatches work a lot more like nex/cc's in that they allow you to get access to more patches/gas, and there are so many larvae that zerg can just get much much more supply. Apparently, chill/hotbid compared supply earlygame, and zerg was at like 60, and T was at 40 (I think? anyone can correct me if necessary).
This is the most horrible thing I have heard about SC2 so far. So, basically zerg is building hatches to acquire more resources, and queens to produce units? hatches = CC/Nex queens = Gate/Rax From what I read that is what makes the most sense because queens seem to spawn a ton of larvae for a lot less money than an equivalent in hatches.
The different production mechanics in SC1 imo are what makes zerg unique. At least it's one of the most important aspects. And now zerg becomes more and more similar to t/p? Say what you want about those new mechanics, but taking away the uniqueness of zerg SUCKS.
Yea, that was me and Hot_Bid. I did 1 rine FE and he did the standard 2 hatch FE 2 queen build. Like 5 minutes into the game he messaged me "whats your supply?" "40" "LOL im 60"
but im sure we didn't play the game properly. I didn't really know how to fully exploit the macro at that point and I feel it would be closer if we tried it now (although an unharassed Zerg would definitely be in the lead).
On August 25 2009 02:21 Meta wrote: It really seemed to me like terran needs a macro mechanic that will help both mineral income and gas income all at once, like the obelisk does for protoss.
WOAH
Are you saying the Proton Charge helped gas collection too?!
The probes that were mining gas were visually effected by the proton charge, however I failed to manually check to see if the gas was coming in at a higher rate. I'm just going off the assumption that because the probes visually changed, the rate at which gas was mined was higher. I could be wrong.
What kind of irks me about the new macro mechanics is that while protoss and zerg got completely new abilities, the terran "improvement" basically means that old comsat now cost money.
You either call down a mule or use comsat. How much money will the mule make during its lifespan? Around 100? 200? That's the money you won't get when you opted for scan.
How the fuck is that fair, when only terran mobile detection is tier 3 and cost a lot of gas. DTs are gonna be even bigger pain in the ass when each scan cost you a lot of money, all the while the protoss is happily spamming proton charge at home. Or burrowed banelings, which you must scan or your army get owned.
On August 25 2009 06:05 adelarge wrote: What kind of irks me about the new macro mechanics is that while protoss and zerg got completely new abilities, the terran "improvement" basically means that old comsat now cost money.
You either call down a mule or use comsat. How much money will the mule make during its lifespan? Around 100? 200? That's the money you won't get when you opted for scan.
How the fuck is that fair, when only terran mobile detection is tier 3 and cost a lot of gas. DTs are gonna be even bigger pain in the ass when each scan cost you a lot of money, all the while the protoss is happily spamming proton charge at home. Or burrowed banelings, which you must scan or your army get owned.
With all this macro feedback Im noticing that there really are two types of people.
Type A Whoa cool I can use comsat or get more minerals? Awesome! Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals! This ability will really help me win! Queen give so many larva. Using this will give me allot of units.
Type B What crap I can use comsat or get more minerals? Lame! Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals. I have to use this ability or ill lose! Queen gives so many larva. If I dont use this Ill fall behind in units.
Also from the recent slashdot interviews Slashdot: There has been some talk that the streamlining of commands has been moving the focus away from actions per minute [APM]. How important is APM as a metric for you and will we see a decline in the importance of this metric?
Dustin Browder: That type of feedback is incredibly important for us. We want players making smart decisions all the time and we want a lot of skill required to play this game at the highest levels. We absolutely want the best players to be the best players. We're not looking to even out or flatten the skill curve so that "everybody can be a winner." This is not the first grade. We want this to be tennis, baseball, football, whatever, we want this to be a game that requires real skill. But at the same time we don't want this to be a bunch of bogus skill. We have definitely gotten rid of some clicks, but we have also added some clicks back in. We got rid of some clicks in terms of how you had to select your buildings and how you had to give build commands, but we also made sure that we had the finest amount of control at the same time.
When we originally put it out there we said you could double-click the barracks and hit 'M,' and you get five marines, one from each barracks for instance. The fans were outraged and we kind of ignored them, saying, "Whatever, this is a better gameplay experience," but as we played it, we realized that it wasn't a better gameplay experience. Maybe when you hit 'M,' what you really wanted was three marines and two marauders, and you couldn't do that. Instead we have said you can select all of your barracks at once, but each click sends a build command individually to each of those barracks. So now you are able to hit "M, M, M, D, D." This gave us a decent amount of clicks, but actually the correct amount of control. That's actually the control you wanted as a player. We weren't looking to hurt you by giving you too many clicks or hold your hand by taking away some of the gameplay experience. We were actually giving you the controls that made you powerful by having the correct balance between the two.
Also we have a bunch of macro mechanics in the game to encourage players to control their economy better, because as you know in Starcraft, economy is king. One of the things that we loved about the original Starcraft was not so much that we want you to click a bunch, but that there was a lot of tension between players who were micro-oriented and players who were economy-oriented. For instance, if you are playing Zerg and are micro-oriented and I'm playing Zerg and I'm economy-oriented, we're kind of playing two different races — not exactly, but a little bit. We're having a very different experience, and that style difference now becomes the interesting problem for both of us, and that is what we're really pursuing with a lot of this stuff. So, we've definitely taken some clicks away, but we have added some back, and I think the fans will be fine with it. Certainly the hardcore fans I've spoken with, who have actually had a chance to play the game, seem to be very positive about the experience.
On August 25 2009 06:05 adelarge wrote: What kind of irks me about the new macro mechanics is that while protoss and zerg got completely new abilities, the terran "improvement" basically means that old comsat now cost money.
You either call down a mule or use comsat. How much money will the mule make during its lifespan? Around 100? 200? That's the money you won't get when you opted for scan.
How the fuck is that fair, when only terran mobile detection is tier 3 and cost a lot of gas. DTs are gonna be even bigger pain in the ass when each scan cost you a lot of money, all the while the protoss is happily spamming proton charge at home. Or burrowed banelings, which you must scan or your army get owned.
With all this macro feedback Im noticing that there really are two types of people.
Type A Whoa cool I can use comsat or get more minerals? Awesome! Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals! This ability will really help me win!
Type B What crap I can use comsat or get more minerals? Lame! Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals. If I dont use this ability Ill lose!
Well, I'm actually a Type C: C1) What the hell? Terran macro mechanics is mutually exclusive with old comsat which used to be free, while zerg and toss can spam their mechanics like no tomorrow without any cons. OR C2) What the hell? Terran macro mechanics is mutually exclusive with old comsat while zerg and toss were given completely new abilities to choose from.
(It depends whether or not the other abilties of obelisk and queen will be interesting. If they will, see C2, if they won't, see C1)
Solutions which would make ma happy 1) Make proton charge and spawn larvae mutually exclusive with some old important ability. Let's say (just example) proton charge would be cast by templars, so more money = less storms. 2) (prefered) Leave comsat free and introduce some new interesting ability, which would be mutually exclusive with mules
On August 25 2009 06:05 adelarge wrote: What kind of irks me about the new macro mechanics is that while protoss and zerg got completely new abilities, the terran "improvement" basically means that old comsat now cost money.
You either call down a mule or use comsat. How much money will the mule make during its lifespan? Around 100? 200? That's the money you won't get when you opted for scan.
How the fuck is that fair, when only terran mobile detection is tier 3 and cost a lot of gas. DTs are gonna be even bigger pain in the ass when each scan cost you a lot of money, all the while the protoss is happily spamming proton charge at home. Or burrowed banelings, which you must scan or your army get owned.
With all this macro feedback Im noticing that there really are two types of people.
Type A Whoa cool I can use comsat or get more minerals? Awesome! Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals! This ability will really help me win!
Type B What crap I can use comsat or get more minerals? Lame! Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals. If I dont use this ability Ill lose!
Actually it is more like
Type A Whoa cool I can use comsat or get more minerals? Awesome, neat choice Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals. If I dont use this ability Ill lose, and just have to spam it Spawn Larva is required for the Queen, all its really good for, FE is useless now
Type B What crap I can use comsat or get more minerals? Lame! Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals! This ability will really help me win! Queen's Spawn Larva means I don't have to worry about Larva with Zerg
From what I hear, I'd fall in the type A camp
I think the difference is that
Terran has a pairing of an economic and a battlefield combat ability that are both usable and worthwhile, so there is a choice
The limited mobility of the Queen and Obelisk mean that their combat ability is really only usable in Base defense. This means that they move into the economic spam realm.
Queen Suggestions: 1. Improve the Transfusion by making it cheaper (this would make it a bit OP on Ultras+buildings)... or possibly give it an additional AoE (200 hp healed on target unit/building+50 on nearby units/buildings) 2. Give the Queen normal movement (not "creep limited").... or, even better make the Creep tumors MUCH cheaper and lower hp. so the Queen can stay with the Zerg army and transfuse.
This would make it worthwhile to build Queens as Zerg healers
Obelisk Suggestions 1. Make Obelisks cheaper and faster to build (increase the energy cost of the abilities to balance) so that Obelisks with your proxy pylon are useful 2. Give the Obelisks an energy pool so that the 'battlefield obelisk' can take energy from the 'economy obelisk' and vice versa (depending on which one you use more)
As for Terran's "Losing" an ability for their new macro.... that is fine as long as the race is balanced overall. Just the other races should as well.
I think better competing abilities for the queen and obelisk are ideal, so that they change from redundant necessary tasks to mechanics that actually require some strategic choice in their use.
Type A Whoa cool I can use comsat or get more minerals? Awesome, neat choice Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals. If I dont use this ability Ill lose, and just have to spam it Spawn Larva is required for the Queen, all its really good for, FE is useless now
Type B What crap I can use comsat or get more minerals? Lame! Wow Obelisk gives so many minerals! This ability will really help me win! Queen's Spawn Larva means I don't have to worry about Larva with Zerg
Is there some rational to those statements or just how you feel?
Eh the terran players have bitched mroe than the toss/zerg players combined concerning what will become of SC2. They pick out all the shortcomings and never address the actually benefits they are getting.
However I would like to see the queen maybe have either a higher mana cost for spawn larvae (like 35?) or maybe higher up the tech tree. Something I've always liked about Zerg is how hatcheries are used to expand and unit production, and while this won't change, I don't want a majority of hte emphasis on the queen. Maybe she adds only a few extra larvae or something, or spawn larvae becomes a researchable ability for the queen at the spawning pool for something like 25 minerals 25 gas (the entire point is requiring the gas so that if they really want to opt for a fast queen they need yet another drone to be wasted for extractor, then more mining gas. As a result hatch first builds would become more viable).
On August 25 2009 07:28 FabledIntegral wrote: Eh the terran players have bitched mroe than the toss/zerg players combined concerning what will become of SC2. They pick out all the shortcomings and never address the actually benefits they are getting.
Because the terrans benefict are lower and shortcomings much bigger.
On August 25 2009 04:46 Meta wrote: The probes that were mining gas were visually effected by the proton charge, however I failed to manually check to see if the gas was coming in at a higher rate. I'm just going off the assumption that because the probes visually changed, the rate at which gas was mined was higher. I could be wrong.
They get the buff but it does not effect their gas collection. If your a little off on your AoE and a couple of probes on minerals don't get it but a couple on gas do get it the best thing to do would be to swap their duties so all the buffed probes are on minerals.
On August 25 2009 07:28 FabledIntegral wrote: Eh the terran players have bitched mroe than the toss/zerg players combined concerning what will become of SC2. They pick out all the shortcomings and never address the actually benefits they are getting.
Because the terrans benefict are lower and shortcomings much bigger.
Assuming you mean benefits as I don't know what benefict means, Terran players just whine in general, whether it's SC1 or SC2. You'll never be satisfied.
The thing is that the Terran don't need these huge economic "skills". They do fine on their own and I won plenty of games without using the mule. Not every race needs some super economic power that benefits them as long as the one lacking one of those economic skills can still win, and it does.
On August 25 2009 11:13 Raydog wrote: The thing is that the Terran don't need these huge economic "skills". They do fine on their own and I won plenty of games without using the mule. Not every race needs some super economic power that benefits them as long as the one lacking one of those economic skills can still win, and it does.
Sorry, I don't quite understand what you're saying here. Would you be willing to reword it? It sounds to me like you're saying terran do fine without using mules. If that's the case then they'll do much better with a mule.
On August 25 2009 11:13 Raydog wrote: The thing is that the Terran don't need these huge economic "skills". They do fine on their own and I won plenty of games without using the mule. Not every race needs some super economic power that benefits them as long as the one lacking one of those economic skills can still win, and it does.
Sorry, I don't quite understand what you're saying here. Would you be willing to reword it? It sounds to me like you're saying terran do fine without using mules. If that's the case then they'll do much better with a mule.
yeah, i apologize with my wording, it was quite confusing.
What I am saying is that terran dont need to use this mule skill 24/7 like the queen's spawn larva and the obelisk power. I didn't use the mule except 1 time (and I sent him into combat just for lolz) and I still won all of those games. Just because the mule is there, doesn't mean it needs to be used. The only time I see it being used is late game and you have 400/400 energy stored up, at which point you decide to expand and you just send down 8 mules to do some quick mining while building SCVs. Other than that scenario, you are fine without them.
On August 25 2009 11:13 Raydog wrote: The thing is that the Terran don't need these huge economic "skills". They do fine on their own and I won plenty of games without using the mule. Not every race needs some super economic power that benefits them as long as the one lacking one of those economic skills can still win, and it does.
Sorry if I don't trust your baseless emperical findings, raydog.
On August 25 2009 11:13 Raydog wrote: The thing is that the Terran don't need these huge economic "skills". They do fine on their own and I won plenty of games without using the mule. Not every race needs some super economic power that benefits them as long as the one lacking one of those economic skills can still win, and it does.
Sorry if I don't trust your baseless emperical findings, raydog.
i'm chill with that, it is just 1 person's take on starcraft 2. However, while at blizzcon, I not only played the game a lot myself, but talked to other people about certain race things (the mule specifically), and they agreed how it isn't really needed and terran can still win. Again, it is still just my take on my starcraft 2 experience at blizzcon this year, but I feel I have a good amount of RTS knowledge, and am not like those random WoW players who went to play sc2, and were like "hey NR15?"
I was actually asked a few times for no rush.. I facepalmed
Since MULE is competing with COMSAT, I don't see MULEs being used much early or mid game because energy is at a premium and COMSAT is worth much more than the 200-300 minerals that the MULE will accrue.
#1 Scouting is priceless #2 Revealing Cloaked Units before you have access to Raven
And then there is the option to go PF when you expand to yellow minerals and other TOI (Targets of Interest) expansions. I would much rather go PF at those spots than OC because the PF will allow you to mine much longer than the short boost of a MULE.
All in all, Terran really won't use MULE much, and isn't built around using it like Zerg are and even Protoss.
On August 25 2009 07:28 FabledIntegral wrote: Eh the terran players have bitched mroe than the toss/zerg players combined concerning what will become of SC2. They pick out all the shortcomings and never address the actually benefits they are getting.
Because the terrans benefict are lower and shortcomings much bigger.
Assuming you mean benefits as I don't know what benefict means, Terran players just whine in general, whether it's SC1 or SC2. You'll never be satisfied.
Sorry for causing you trouble with understanding my post, but I see you manage to figure it in the end, so I hope it's no big deal.
I've already explained which solutions would make me satisfied in my previous post.
On August 25 2009 11:34 Aegraen wrote: Since MULE is competing with COMSAT, I don't see MULEs being used much early or mid game because energy is at a premium and COMSAT is worth much more than the 200-300 minerals that the MULE will accrue.
#1 Scouting is priceless #2 Revealing Cloaked Units before you have access to Raven
And then there is the option to go PF when you expand to yellow minerals and other TOI (Targets of Interest) expansions. I would much rather go PF at those spots than OC because the PF will allow you to mine much longer than the short boost of a MULE.
All in all, Terran really won't use MULE much, and isn't built around using it like Zerg are and even Protoss.
Completely disagree. I never used comsat unless forced to by cloaked units. Maybe you need to play SC2 to see how quickly macro ramps up. Skipping the MULE early game is like skipping 6 SCVs in SC.
On August 25 2009 11:34 Aegraen wrote: Since MULE is competing with COMSAT, I don't see MULEs being used much early or mid game because energy is at a premium and COMSAT is worth much more than the 200-300 minerals that the MULE will accrue.
#1 Scouting is priceless #2 Revealing Cloaked Units before you have access to Raven
And then there is the option to go PF when you expand to yellow minerals and other TOI (Targets of Interest) expansions. I would much rather go PF at those spots than OC because the PF will allow you to mine much longer than the short boost of a MULE.
All in all, Terran really won't use MULE much, and isn't built around using it like Zerg are and even Protoss.
Completely disagree. I never used comsat unless forced to by cloaked units. Maybe you need to play SC2 to see how quickly macro ramps up. Skipping the MULE early game is like skipping 6 SCVs in SC.
Yeah, that was pretty much theorycraft. Consider though you don't even get your money back (or do you? How many Mins do MULE gather in their life) from the initial investment, where as the Protoss and Zerg versions recoup their investment much faster.
It also seems like Ravens come later than both Obs and 'Seer. I would also assume that you would have to save at least 1 COMSAT early game vs Protoss due to DT's.
In any case you have played and I haven't so I would have to defer to your judgement.
I still hold fast to the PF > OC in those expansions though.
On August 25 2009 11:34 Aegraen wrote: Since MULE is competing with COMSAT, I don't see MULEs being used much early or mid game because energy is at a premium and COMSAT is worth much more than the 200-300 minerals that the MULE will accrue.
#1 Scouting is priceless #2 Revealing Cloaked Units before you have access to Raven
And then there is the option to go PF when you expand to yellow minerals and other TOI (Targets of Interest) expansions. I would much rather go PF at those spots than OC because the PF will allow you to mine much longer than the short boost of a MULE.
All in all, Terran really won't use MULE much, and isn't built around using it like Zerg are and even Protoss.
Completely disagree. I never used comsat unless forced to by cloaked units. Maybe you need to play SC2 to see how quickly macro ramps up. Skipping the MULE early game is like skipping 6 SCVs in SC.
Yeah, that was pretty much theorycraft. Consider though you don't even get your money back (or do you? How many Mins do MULE gather in their life) from the initial investment, where as the Protoss and Zerg versions recoup their investment much faster.
Mule production takes a 150 mineral investment, after which they cost energy to build, just like the other mechanics. They last for the time it takes to build around 30 energy, and gather 30 minerals per trip. The move and gather like a normal SCV. You can calculate their value from that. It's a lot.
Chill what was your overall impression of the macro mechanics? Did they feel repetitive or did they enhance the gameplay expierence? What did you think of the obelisk?
SC2 was really fun, but i feel their may be a few advantages to races such as protoss, who have the thing that instantly sends reinforcements. I feel blizzard has done a good job on making the game and wont stop untill all of the races are perfectly balanced. The Graffics are great, The new upgrades are fun, The new Units are awesome but not very micro intensive, like losingID8 said the protoss macro late game is very easy, the games go much faster also because you can pump out units much faster and upgrade your workers to mine faster or carry more minerals. I really think they should nerf protoss a bit and make zerg a little better, the coloses for protoss is very good and requires no micro to kill up 15 units alone, MORE WORK ON ZERG. Otherwise great game and i overexagerated on how much they should nerf protoss.
Zerg seems so shitty atm, you gotta constantly use your queen to get enough larvae and anyways you wont survive late game cause the other races are better. The extra larvae should be an extra feature to your hatcheries not your only way to get enough units to survive. I say protoss and terran > zerg atm.
Zerg needs some more work IMO like a late game boost (new unit or better upgrades) and a nerfed queen + better hatcheries.
On August 25 2009 14:43 KinosJourney2 wrote: Zerg seems so shitty atm, you gotta constantly use your queen to get enough larvae and anyways you wont survive late game cause the other races are better. The extra larvae should be an extra feature to your hatcheries not your only way to get enough units to survive. I say protoss and terran > zerg atm.
Zerg needs some more work IMO like a late game boost (new unit or better upgrades) and a nerfed queen + better hatcheries.
How in the world did you come to that conclusion? If you've even been following what's been said it sounds like the queen provide an insane bonus, not that they are underpowered. To find such conclusions that toss + terran both > zerg is ridiculous to me.
On August 25 2009 19:05 Zanno wrote: There is basically zero point in complaining about racial balance until the expansion pack comes out, let alone the full game.
Blizzard has said they don't know if they are going to add units in each expansion pack or not. I would imagine the 2nd Expansion would have added units for multiplayer and the 3rd Expansion wouldn't, or you could vice versa due to incentive to sale the 3rd....Either or, I don't think both Expansions will have units included.
Secondly, we would like to play the most balanced game possible for the year / year and a half until each Expansion gets released.
I was afraid of sc2 because of shit like in CnC3, EVERYTHING has an ability and then DoW2 came out and most things have an ability so whenever you get into a fight, all you do you just shit all your abilities on the enemy and by the time the next skirmish happens, everything has been recharged.
Especially in DoW2 where energy was pretty high so you could basically use your abilities every time the cooldown had ended.
I want to play a strategy game, not "who can shit what out the most". Some abilities do need skill to use effectively like storm and dust cloud, but when everything has one where all you need to do is headbutt your keyboard then thats just pretty gay yo
On August 25 2009 19:26 ToT)OjKa( wrote: I was afraid of sc2 because of shit like in CnC3, EVERYTHING has an ability and then DoW2 came out and most things have an ability so whenever you get into a fight, all you do you just shit all your abilities on the enemy and by the time the next skirmish happens, everything has been recharged.
Especially in DoW2 where energy was pretty high so you could basically use your abilities every time the cooldown had ended.
I want to play a strategy game, not "who can shit what out the most". Some abilities do need skill to use effectively like storm and dust cloud, but when everything has one where all you need to do is headbutt your keyboard then thats just pretty gay yo
/facepalm
You do know there is +1 or -1 for each race the same amount of abilities. Do people not look into this further before they say things like this? Wouldn't you rather have useful abilities that take the same number as in SC1 vice the mostly shitty abilities in SC1 so you are left with mostly useless junk?
I will not get into all the crazy stuff the short of it is......
I loved this game I can not wait to try it out more.I only got about 12 games in.I had no experience with higher tech in any race. I played Zerg once didnt like them based off one time so I could end up liking them more with more play. Terran and toss I enjoyed playing so much. When SC2 comes out My wife my leave me. hahha
What did you think of the new macro mechanics (spawn larva, proton charge, mule)?
i mainly played zerg at blizzcon after building a queen for the first time because spawn larva is off the wall insane good
-What did you think of the macro casters (queen, obelisk, orbital command)?
the queen seems way stronger than both the obelisk and the orbital command. the queen keeps your options open and allows you to punish your oponnents weakness in their build order. with only costing 150 minerals you get a unit that can defend or be offensive and it can spawn 4 larva whenever, lol wut? the queen i believe was created so that a zerg player could keep up 1 base vs 1 base but it actually puts you ahead always, which doesnt seem fair
-Were they fun to use?
not really, it felt like i was cheating
-How often did you use them?
anytime casting spawn larva was possible
-What decision-making was involved with them?
do i need to build 4 more units per hatchery? oh, i do? ok.
On August 25 2009 19:05 Zanno wrote: There is basically zero point in complaining about racial balance until the expansion pack comes out, let alone the full game.
Blizzard has said they don't know if they are going to add units in each expansion pack or not. I would imagine the 2nd Expansion would have added units for multiplayer and the 3rd Expansion wouldn't, or you could vice versa due to incentive to sale the 3rd....Either or, I don't think both Expansions will have units included.
Secondly, we would like to play the most balanced game possible for the year / year and a half until each Expansion gets released.
Given that Blizzard's tendencies are to add two units in their expansions, they'll probably add one unit per expansion this time. The fact that there are going to be two expansion packs to this game was confirmed ages ago. I'm calling it now that one of the expansion units will obviously be the terran medic.
He said that they are definitely withholding things and this is nothing new - Dark Templar and Valkyries were withheld for the SC expansion, the Night Elf Warden and Troll Shadow Hunter were also withheld for the WC3 expansion.
The Orbital Command definitely forced you to balance between the MULE and SCAN and the supply depot made terran a more forgiving race. Can't really say they were very enjoyable; however, they definitely add depth.
I think a big question would be what kind of decision making should be involved in mining. For one do you really want to have to make decisions whenever you want to mine?
OH another thing I just remembered that was quite annoying... When you hit the ` button to go to your idle worker... even if you double tap it, it won't move you to its screen. So basically You don't know where that idle worker is, its quite annoying.
On August 26 2009 05:24 hifriend wrote: Btw, does f2-f4 save location commands exist in sc2? I mean now that double tapping hotkeys won't be an alternative.
I tried it and it didn't work, although where are you getting double-tapping hotkeys doesn't work? I'm 99% sure I used double-tapping to go back to buildings and units all the time.
On August 26 2009 05:51 Archerofaiur wrote: I think a big question would be what kind of decision making should be involved in mining. For one do you really want to have to make decisions whenever you want to mine?
we already make decisions in mining in SC1 (such as do I want to cut probes, when to get gas, when to expand, etc). The most optimal and best decisions have already been determined for a long time now though. SC2 will be no different in time.
On August 26 2009 05:51 Archerofaiur wrote: I think a big question would be what kind of decision making should be involved in mining. For one do you really want to have to make decisions whenever you want to mine?
we already make decisions in mining in SC1 (such as do I want to cut probes, when to get gas, when to expand, etc).
Good point but there in lay the problem with manual mining. The decisions for workers were mostly temporal not spacial. When not where. Thats part of why automining was put in. AM focuses on the when.
What did you think of the new macro mechanics (spawn larva, proton charge, mule)?
I think they work quite well. I only played a limited amount of the game (like everyone else here), so I'm not going to give it final judgment like many seem to be doing.
-What did you think of the macro casters (queen, obelisk, orbital command)?
To be honest I always forgot to make my queen. I played all my games without her (or I built her during mid game and was too busy doing other stuff to use her abilities). That being said, I beat every guy I face at the community tournaments with a makeshift 2-3 hatch muta and early zergling harass.
-Were they fun to use?
I killed other people's Queens quite quickly with just 5 mutas, they really aren't intimidating defenders, so I'm glad they aren't like heroes in that sense
-How often did you use them?
barely ever, because I was so new to the game
-What decision-making was involved with them?
im sure there will be many, but really I had such a limited time with the game that I don't feel comfortable commenting
I didn't know that the mule was actually 6x SCV; that makes the tradeoff between the mule and comsat an actual tradeoff instead of just ignoring the mule altogether, but it's still a painful one because you lose the ability to comsat.
I know lurker is hive tech now and raven/banshee share the same tech level so terran should be able to get ravens for detection vs. those, but how high up on the tree is the Dark Templar? Although if marine/marauder is viable vs. protoss then T would probably end up getting an ebay anyway, and thus can build turrets for detection.
I was very scared of SC2 and I didn't like a few things I saw in gameplay videos. However, after actually playing it for a bit, I was very pleased that this game is going to be very much life Starcraft:BW, but the new units and abilities are going to change the game into a newer, more interesting experience.
All the new abilities were very intimidating and I didn't know when to use them and didn't have time to think of strategies besides those I knew from BW. I don't feel anyone here has the right to talk about how balanced this game is when they only played a limited amount of time of the game and against players who had no idea how to bring all the new content together into solid strategies/counters.
All I can really say is that the game feels very nice, it's simple, and yet the depth is clearly there. It feels overwhelming, and some of the units seem uselss with so many new options, but this is simply because people still see it as an edited version of brood war, as opposed to a new game.
Can't wait to play the beta ^_^
oh, and in the brief time I used them, siege tanks were very effective.
Q: Are the macro mechanics working like expected, or do they get too repetitive after a while? What about their mineral-only aspect? Does that work late game, or the mineral-only units are getting smashed by superior tech, anyways? Won't the mineral/gas ratio skew gameplay to basic units and static defenses?
A: One thing I did not like about the game how it is, is the fact that while playing Protoss and using PC I got a TON of minerals, like a LOT!! And I could make a bajillion Zealots, Terrans "Mule calldown" is almost counter productive, you have to pay 150 minerals to have your command center stop doing anything for about 60 seconds at least just to upgrade to Orbital Command.
As for is the new econ stuff just a APM sink or is it effective, Mule felt like an APM sink because you didn't feel the minerals coming in, I'm sure you got a more then usual amount but you don't feel it, and hitting 1, E, and clicking on a mineral field is hardly APM sink. For PC you REALLY feel it, it adds 1 mineral for each trip for your probes, and it shows a LOT. Protoss gets so much more minerals than the other races (at least early-mid to early late game) that if you got the obalisk rather quickly for PC than you would basicly win every time because you can now make 1 Zealot for every 2 zerglings or 2 marines.
That being said it felt like since the Mule calldown was so poor for mineral gain, the Terran was VERY behind on the economy race. Zerg has the larva spawn which gets expansions up in about 3 seconds, and Protoss can kill people with numbers alone. I did actually test this theory and my body was able to make as ALMOST as many Zealots as I has marines in the space of about 10 minutes, Terran Econ just feels realllly slow, and it hurts them a lot because their units are not all that strong, and the new pathing helps melee units a lot.
As for gas, once you got an expansion or 2 it wasn't to too bad, it did feel just about balanced. What they need to do though it either take out PC, Mule, and possibly larva spawn out completely, or take a hard look at balancing the fact that Protoss can produce as much as Terran, but all their units are at least double the strength.
Interesting point - you could build queens and obelisk without stopping drone/probe production, but when you want orbital command, you must shut down your SCV production for a significant time.
The terran macro mechanic seems worse every time I hear about it...
Q: Are the macro mechanics working like expected, or do they get too repetitive after a while? What about their mineral-only aspect? Does that work late game, or the mineral-only units are getting smashed by superior tech, anyways? Won't the mineral/gas ratio skew gameplay to basic units and static defenses?
A: One thing I did not like about the game how it is, is the fact that while playing Protoss and using PC I got a TON of minerals, like a LOT!! And I could make a bajillion Zealots, Terrans "Mule calldown" is almost counter productive, you have to pay 150 minerals to have your command center stop doing anything for about 60 seconds at least just to upgrade to Orbital Command.
As for is the new econ stuff just a APM sink or is it effective, Mule felt like an APM sink because you didn't feel the minerals coming in, I'm sure you got a more then usual amount but you don't feel it, and hitting 1, E, and clicking on a mineral field is hardly APM sink. For PC you REALLY feel it, it adds 1 mineral for each trip for your probes, and it shows a LOT. Protoss gets so much more minerals than the other races (at least early-mid to early late game) that if you got the obalisk rather quickly for PC than you would basicly win every time because you can now make 1 Zealot for every 2 zerglings or 2 marines.
That being said it felt like since the Mule calldown was so poor for mineral gain, the Terran was VERY behind on the economy race. Zerg has the larva spawn which gets expansions up in about 3 seconds, and Protoss can kill people with numbers alone. I did actually test this theory and my body was able to make as ALMOST as many Zealots as I has marines in the space of about 10 minutes, Terran Econ just feels realllly slow, and it hurts them a lot because their units are not all that strong, and the new pathing helps melee units a lot.
As for gas, once you got an expansion or 2 it wasn't to too bad, it did feel just about balanced. What they need to do though it either take out PC, Mule, and possibly larva spawn out completely, or take a hard look at balancing the fact that Protoss can produce as much as Terran, but all their units are at least double the strength.
Interesting point - you could build queens and obelisk without stopping drone/probe production, but when you want orbital command, you must shut down your SCV production for a significant time.
The terran macro mechanic seems worse every time I hear about it...
Significant time, ie the time to build one scv which is made up by the price reduction 200 vs 150. Everything in that FAQ is wrong.
I would like to know why comsat is suddenly unnecessary in SC2. Terran players build and use comsats even when the other side doesn't have a single cloaked unit in SC, why should it be different in SC2? Will scouting become less important? Or is it just that the necessity of keeping up with the macro abilities of the other races (or, in a TvT, comsat vs. mule) means that you simply cannot afford to use comsat? Or are you supposed to make up for the lack of comsat by spamming sensor towers all over the map?
On August 26 2009 07:22 General Nuke Em wrote: I would like to know why comsat is suddenly unnecessary in SC2. Terran players build and use comsats even when the other side doesn't have a single cloaked unit in SC, why should it be different in SC2? Will scouting become less important? Or is it just that the necessity of keeping up with the macro abilities of the other races (or, in a TvT, comsat vs. mule) means that you simply cannot afford to use comsat? Or are you supposed to make up for the lack of comsat by spamming sensor towers all over the map?
I think you're supposed to make a choice, which is a nice trait for the terran mechanics that hopefully will be added to the queen/obelisk.
I like how half the people complain that the queen and obelisk dont have choice and the other half complain about having to choose with the orbital command :p
I am pro choice. Can the queen and obelisk mechanic be kept mechanically the same, but tweaked in such a way that using the mechanic is a choice rather than a compulsory action?
On August 24 2009 19:10 loft wrote: old macro mechanic was just because of a bad UI... (no MBS, no automine)
so we have these two things now, but we still need something to make the game physically challenging.
Right now SC2 is asking the player to use an ability for most efficient resources. With critiques saying this task is pointless. Do you have to look at your base to use a dark pylon (I don't think so)
ok: Old macro = looking at your base for pointless actions New macro = should be looking at your base for meaningful action
Maybe there should be a "training station" a small building. One SCV goes in and comes out with faster mining ability for X amount of time. Or even like military training and you can do the same for units, but the key is that this is going on in your base maintaining the macro demand.
Another approach would be to keep the base maintenance easy, but advance the players ability to both attack and defend multiple locations. Units specifically for hit and run.
there is nothing inherently more meaningful about going back to your base clicking on an obelisk to make your probes go faster than going back to your base to tell your probes to mine.
They just replaced one task with another and calling one modern and one old is just loaded words. Both are there for the same purpose and whichever one is the most fun should be chosen.
On August 26 2009 08:12 Badjas wrote: I am pro choice. Can the queen and obelisk mechanic be kept mechanically the same, but tweaked in such a way that using the mechanic is a choice rather than a compulsory action?
Very , Very easily for the Queen
Improve Transfuse + Creep Tumor (make Queen more expensive to compensate)
Weaken Spawn Larva (make Queen cheaper to compensate)
Obelisk a bit more difficult, but the same idea....(improving Shield Battery+energy recharge primarily needs a way to get the Obelisk on the battlefield) This would require Obelisks to move or to share their energy with each other. But the mechanic of Proton Charge could be the same
Right now SC2 P+Z macro is just as bad as BW macro, pointless automation hopefully P+Z macro can be improved.
it should be better a significant amount of the time, and worse a significant amount of the time.
Currently it seems as if Proton Charge/ Spawn Larva are worse only an insignificant amount of time. Wheras MULE is worse a significant amount of time. (but also better a significant amount of time)
yeah, honestly terran macro felt a lot like war3. Let the workers work, and just have all your production buildings hotkeyed and just tab through them to keep makin units
On August 26 2009 11:33 Raydog wrote: yeah, honestly terran macro felt a lot like war3. Let the workers work, and just have all your production buildings hotkeyed and just tab through them to keep makin units
I don't see a problem with this, as you are going to have 3, 4, 5 times as many buildings producing as in warcraft 3. StarCraft is hard because it's poorly designed - making unit-building macro easier (still willr equire some APM) will free up time for good strategic thought, impressive micro, better army positioning, etc. - all the exciting things. I'd be pissed off if I bought the game and had to click each barrack to make a unit it's just stupid design let's see some progression. I don't think it will hurt the competitiveness as much as people think - it is one of the least significant factors in the success of the original SC as an ESPORT.
On August 26 2009 11:33 Raydog wrote: yeah, honestly terran macro felt a lot like war3. Let the workers work, and just have all your production buildings hotkeyed and just tab through them to keep makin units
I don't see a problem with this, as you are going to have 3, 4, 5 times as many buildings producing as in warcraft 3. StarCraft is hard because it's poorly designed - making unit-building macro easier (still willr equire some APM) will free up time for good strategic thought, impressive micro, better army positioning, etc. - all the exciting things. I'd be pissed off if I bought the game and had to click each barrack to make a unit it's just stupid design let's see some progression. I don't think it will hurt the competitiveness as much as people think - it is one of the least significant factors in the success of the original SC as an ESPORT.
yeah I never meant to say it as a problem, just as a (what I consider myself to be) experienced war3 player, It was strikingly similar. The only difference is that when you have say 3 Raxs in a group, you have to hit mmm to make 1 marine in each rax. Whereas in war3 if you want to make a sorceress at each arcane sanctum, and both are in a group, just have to hit s once.
I like this macro in sc2 a lot more than original sc. I just wanted to say what it reminded me of, never meant to say it like it was a problem.
hmmm, maybe with the obelisk, they can increase the shield battery's range (casting range). so if u decided to spam all your energy making your workers mine more, and don't have any energy left for shield batteries, and u only have a zealot blocking ur ramp, if you get rushed, you lose. but if u did have the energy, ur zealot would survive? something to that effect? so you have to scout your opponent and determine whether to take the economic advantage, or to play it safe for a bit and prepare for a rush? iunno something to that effect...
The obelisk idea that comes to mind for me is allowing the shield recharge to speed up building construction, allowing a player to sacrifice econ for faster tech.
Although that ability wouldn't be as useful in the end-game.
Protoss mechanic is the easiest to use (LoL). And it's also the most evident, that's why I played like 65% of the games with toss at blizzcon (out of like 30 games?).
The Mule calldown did seem a lot shittier, for the aforementioned reasons (Does the mule actually mine more per trip? I didn't really pay attention), and also that when you call it down, it takes like 3 seconds to hit the floor. Then you need to tell it to mine. Compared to Z or P you just click the unit/bldg and hit the hotkey and it's basically done. (well for zerg you have to wait a bit and then larva pop out but that's ok, it's like it doubles your hatch)
The main thing that pissed me off with this build is just the 'fix' to prevent easy macro since it's all MBS. On one hand its really good because you don't accidentally build 3 overlords when you just want 1 or two. You can designate how many according to how many times you press O once your hatches are selected. But on the other hand it makes zerg macro SOooooo much worse compared to protoss. Especially if you plan to make banelings or lurkers, because each ling/hydra also needs to upgraded 1 at a time when mass selected.
This was also kind of annoying when there were multiple structures selected that had minor differences. Example: Terran fortress thing and the terran comscan/mule thing if you had these upped and your CCs were all 1 hotkey it won't build SCV out of other CCs, just the ones that took priorty. So instead of making 3 scv- one at each base it would make 3 at the fortress. So in other words, to keep the game mechanically easier its probably actually better to avoid the CC upgrades and shit like that if you can (this is bad for game design if they actually want people to use the stuff they worked so hard on). And same thing applied to barracks with addons or whatever bldg that had a modifier or upg. So like 3 normal barracks, one with a tech lab, and one with a reactor and you try to make a marine for all of them and you only get 5 marines at the tech lab or something. edit- you might have been able to tab through structures like you can in wc3 but I didn't try that and that sucks ass anyways, just adds even more clicks which is especially bad for zerg imo. As it is now zerg requires like 5x the macro which totally sucks since they have fragile/melee units.
On August 27 2009 05:19 CharlieMurphy wrote: Protoss mechanic is the easiest to use (LoL). And it's also the most evident, that's why I played like 65% of the games with toss at blizzcon (out of like 30 games?).
The Mule calldown did seem a lot shittier, for the aforementioned reasons (Does the mule actually mine more per trip? I didn't really pay attention), and also that when you call it down, it takes like 3 seconds to hit the floor. Then you need to tell it to mine.
I've recently been told you can now call the mule down directly on minerals. Did you try that? I guess maybe it wasn't in that build?
On August 27 2009 03:40 Archerofaiur wrote: Question for people who played at Blizzcon
Did you find yourself using Warp-In all the time or were there situations where you would use gateways?
They both have their uses. Warp Gates I found to be a pain in the ass to use because every unit you throw down deselected your gates or something and I wasn't able to reproduce the videos where they throw down like units like bam,bam,bam bam in rapid succession. In summary they require more macro to use and they shut down your production for a while (while upgrading). So it's not ideal to rush to even in the early game unless your strategy is going to exploit their mobility or something.
Just like I said in the above post, it's probably actually better to not even get them at all because the same reason as the CC upgrade. Mechanically, gateways are easier to use for late game macro especially.
They were really fucking good however, to have units appear right in battle or with a proxied pylon in the enemy base warping in DTs. It's fucking rape. So like I said, if your strat requires the warp gates then yea, get them, if not, you're probably better off sticking to regular gates.
On August 27 2009 05:19 CharlieMurphy wrote: Protoss mechanic is the easiest to use (LoL). And it's also the most evident, that's why I played like 65% of the games with toss at blizzcon (out of like 30 games?).
The Mule calldown did seem a lot shittier, for the aforementioned reasons (Does the mule actually mine more per trip? I didn't really pay attention), and also that when you call it down, it takes like 3 seconds to hit the floor. Then you need to tell it to mine.
I've recently been told you can now call the mule down directly on minerals. Did you try that? I guess maybe it wasn't in that build?
yea maybe not, I don't think I was able to do that.
What did you think of the new macro mechanics (spawn larva, proton charge, mule)?
Easiest/Best to Worst: Protoss,Zerg,Terran It is a good mechanic and fun to use. It requires timing and skill just like making more workers all the time does.
-What did you think of the macro casters (queen, obelisk, orbital command)?
Isn't this the same question as above? First couple of games I forgot to use the queen and my 9pool/speed (which I tried like 3 times) got stomped horribly vs 2 gate zeal. So it is important to say the least. The toughest decision is just when to start the macro up, with zerg it's easier because you get the defense unit but for terran or toss you need a certain amount of workers to decide when it is optimal to build the thing. And the dark pylon actually needs a regular pylon to power it so usually that required me to build a pylon near my nexus first since my first one was usually near my ramp or something. (so 300 mins and some time before it kicks in)
-Were they fun to use?
yea they were, I guess I answered this in the first one as well.
-How often did you use them?
A lot, it is important to use this as much as possible once you have it, to gain that macro edge in your game.
-What decision-making was involved with them?
Usually I played a standard BW BO then after a little harassment or early game skirmishing and more worker production and money (especially when you have more workers to benefit from proton charge) then I built the orbital command or dark obelisk. It totally felt much more important to get the +1 return on all your probes faster than to get up a faster tech/cyber core or something.
On August 27 2009 05:19 CharlieMurphy wrote: Protoss mechanic is the easiest to use (LoL). And it's also the most evident, that's why I played like 65% of the games with toss at blizzcon (out of like 30 games?).
The Mule calldown did seem a lot shittier, for the aforementioned reasons (Does the mule actually mine more per trip? I didn't really pay attention), and also that when you call it down, it takes like 3 seconds to hit the floor. Then you need to tell it to mine.
I've recently been told you can now call the mule down directly on minerals. Did you try that? I guess maybe it wasn't in that build?
yea maybe not, I don't think I was able to do that.
Calling down mules onto mineral patches worked just fine. As for MBS with buildings with different add-ons/upgrades, you can tab through them. That wasn't very convenient for marines though, which frustrated me a lot.
the proton charge was also the best because it wasn't a fixed bonus, you could use it on 1 or 100 workers, so just before u transfer to ur nat you boost them up. More larva or Mule don't have any gain obviously for something like this.
I remember specifically a PvT I played where the terran went Marine/Marauder and I did a 1 gate rush to FE. He crushed my nat before I could get my collosus out but since I had been spamming protons and workers on both bases for a few minutes he wasn't able to break in and I had enough money to finish my collosus tech and re expand elsewhere.
My highlighted experiences of SC2:
Reapers, these fuckers are amazing. They scout and move fast like pros. They sneak around anywhere. they can stim. they can throw bombs. they rape small units. The only downside is the slow tech. More than a few games I opened with the standard marine marauder wall in, but secretly I got a merc compound and upped stim and d8 chargers and made 4-8 reapers. While moving out with my decent sized Marine maurader and expanding (pushing the enemy back to their base(s) I secretly moved my unknown reaper force into their mineral line (took 4 reapers to take down a probe and they were very good at move and shoot). But before I attack the workers I throw down some D charges behind the probes (where they would run) and on the probes. Needless to say lots of them go boom as well as the defense units coming to save the day. But the stimmed reapers are too crazy for melee and just run away from most ranged units.
Baneling drops, I tried to do this in almost every game I played with zerg (which was like 5-6 games) but only managed to do it in 1. they take quite a bit of tech and macro to get a sizeable force of them. And then you still need to upg drop and speed on ur lords. But once I finally did I fucking moving dropped them in the guy's SCV line and it was Amazing. they don't do a huge amount of damage like a scarab but 6 of them still managed to get a grief stricken face of my opponent across me who was going 1 base BC.
Overseer Changelings, these are so fun to use and very very good recon. Enemy units don't automatically shoot at them and if dropped near enemy base they create a teir 1 unit? of the appropriate race (marine in my case). I loved running these around in the guy's base and I swear I saw the guy trying to micro the straying marine a few times before he realized it wasn't his and sniped it with his ghost lol.
This part is long Teamplay/Winning 3v1, during the last few hours of blizzcon I sat down after literally an hour long line this time and played some guy who wasn't fairly decent but not really that good. He was defeated 2-0 and then I stayed sitting there calling out for an opponent like I had just sat down. It actually took like 10 minutes for some reason (buncha idiots wanting to play Dota and shit). wtf, seriously, who comes to blizzcon to play dota? Anyways so a girl and 2 guys showed up and the coordinator told us we'd be doing a 2v2. I said cool, this would be my first 2v2 iirc. One guy's name was Tree, girl's name was Cady, and the other guy I forget. So I made my name House as to go with Tree. They assumed I was referencing the TV show and told me to go back to the hospital etc.
So the first game was underway and I had proxy 2 gated at my nat and rushed a zerg and with macroing reinforcement zeals eventually took out all the buildings (the mantalings from buildings are quite annoying >.< ) but she managed to escape her drones and rebuilt somewhere. My ally was slowy teching to DTs, and I was making an expansion going heavy stalker/zeal. I rekilled the zerg and smashed into the walled in terran and then just let my allies DT finish him off so he could get some playtime lol. They were all pretty noob but that's understandable. After some minor banter about me being a beast they decided to put the girl on my team this time.
Turns out the girl was actually a bit better because she was a great teammate and actually asked me what to build and for tips unlike my previous partner. I told her to just make sure to spawn larvas with her queen and pump lots of drones, and FE. And then mass hydras. So this game I had done esentially the same strat of zealot rushing and did quite a bit of damage to one terran but as I was raping him I typed in LIFT and a few seconds later he did. And began rebuilding on an island. Then I noticed Cady was doing awesome and had a sizeable force of hydras. Along with my stalker/zeal and 1 collosus army I said lets go break the other guy's wall. He had just gotten a few tanks up behind his wall and bunker so I took heavy losses on busting open the door. But Cady had lost nearly nothing and could have probably finished him off had she followed my "target the tank" instruction, but I guess she was too busy. She did manage to take out the bunker and my zeal got 1 last hit to finish off the tank but overall it was a loss. I told her to switch to muta because the island guy and she did. While she was amassing muta I had sent a few warprays and phoenix over to harass the terran luckily before he had turrets and much AA up but close to teir 2.5/3 tech. Her mutas came in and cleaned up. Meanwhile I had created a few more bases and a lot of ground forces zeals and immortals with 2 collossus, and a small strike force of blink stalkers. As I moved into the walled terran again I used a Col to see up the hill on the side and sneak in some stalkers to drill his min line. This caused him to unseige and move all his force to defend which enabled me to just walk in and rape with the rest of my ground. Her mutas were redundant but it was GG again.
So upon joining the next game and reading that I was a beast and more house references I jokingly suggested a 3v1 which they agreed to. I didn't expect to win this at all, especially since they actually chose the WORST map for terran which was this weird 2v2 map where 2 bases are connected and share 1 really wide ass ramp. Furthermore I didn't even realize that this was the map (had only played it once) and had begun SSBSSBing the wall in lol. after a few minutes I noticed an assimilator warping in near me and went to scout and noticed a whole base lol. So I made a bunker and started leapfrogging into the protoss. The funny part was when the probes tried to escape and I had a wall up but I accidentally sunk a depot and let them all out anyways. So they got to escape and rebuild in some obscure part of the map (yellow mins). One terran wised up and tried to save the protoss with his M/M but couldn't match my uphill M/M walled at this point and gave up after a few skirmishes. But It gave me another base with my wallin and I just teched to Seige tanks and reapers as I expanded 3 times in base. I found the protoss base and reapered it up until canons came online. Then I finished it off with a small M/M force. She retreated to the safety of the other 2's main and rebuilt on one of their inner nats.
By this time I was rolling in the money and began pumping Vikings and putting up lots of turrets and sensor towers. A few minutes after I noticed a bleep on the map and saw a red "!" moving around to my backside. I wrote a little "I see you" and it slowed to a stop. Then 30 seconds later it came in and dropped a cloaked ghost in futility which I took out with my massive 12 viking force of macroed off 4 and now 5 starports.
Right after this I decided it's time to go harass with them since there was a zerg opponent anyways. I move across the map and got a few lords. Then I flew around to the back of their base and reverted to ground mode and raped a ton of SCV, lifted back off when muta arrived and began to hit and run the muta. The muta proved to be too strong and fast in an nearly equal numbered fight and I lost my force. But I was persistent and had remade another 12 or so vikings along with my tons of M/M Tank. This time I decided it's time to move out on them and push into their wallin using seiged tanks and viking sight. So I opened up shop and began to pot shot units and buildings. My vikings began to harrass the protoss and and they managed to defend quite well taking out half of my vikings again. But I had been busy making turrets and sensor towers across the map as well as BCs with yamoto upgrade. They tried in vain to nuke my vikings as I swung them back and forth against their air units. Eventually they wisened up and aimed a nuke right at my tank m/m force and I quickly moved away. At this very moment the mutas began to chase my vikings as I retreated and the nuke blasted every single one which gained simultaneous LOLs from 3 players including me.
I reseiged the partial wall in and brought the vikings back into the main and took free reign on the lords and eventually the drones. The terran managed to clean them up, but by this time I had BC rallying to my tanks and Yamoto'd a few tanks and waltzed in. They didn't leave right away trying to nuke me some more but I dodged them all and bulldozed down their bases. After some questioning they decided that I was too good and GG'd a final time. It was so fun. BETA SOON PLZ
Way to keep the OP updated!!! Man, thats one of the coolest things I've seen since I started comming to TL.
As for me, I got to play it a long time ago back at the WWI in Paris. It was just breathtaking, and I must say I loved the Banelings. Also, I thouht Ultralisks were too big! But I really loved the game, I think the nay sayers who havent played it, and are sketical of Blizzard, will once again be wow'd by the High Quality game they will turn out.
On August 27 2009 10:05 CharlieMurphy wrote: you're welcome, maybe I should make a blog about my SC2 experiences, it's probably mostly unnoticed here in this thread.
Big thanks for the battle reports :D Entertaining and got me exciting about the game even more - can just imagine how the games went and how much fun it will be :D
Well being that I was a newb I was at my base most of the time just macroing and checking prices and tech and stuff, so more in that regard. I mean most of the attacks were either win game/lose game straight up since no one knew what would win exactly and by how much exactly. So yes, there is more macro because you are constantly checking if you have a probe going at each base and then looking around at your nexuses (Nexii?) to see if you need to proton charge. And once I had like 3 bases going with proton charge and a 4th one going up on yellow minerals I literally couldn't keep up with my income anymore and was macroing like crazy trying to make more gates and pylons. And from there I went from like 80-100 supply in 15 minutes to 169 (last I looked, may have been the cap?) 200 in like 4 more minutes. And My apm is not trash either, I can pull like 200~
oh yea, I wrote "gg" in pylons while I was doing this in the middle of the map and I blackholed some noobs scvs at his min line. It was funny.
Also When I played inreach in a game he had crazy vicious zerg macro with queen larva and managed to make like 30 ultras in like 15-20 minutes off of 3-4 bases as well. It seemed pretty hard to expand, but I didn't go for storm.
On August 27 2009 10:55 CharlieMurphy wrote: Well being that I was a newb I was at my base most of the time just macroing and checking prices and tech and stuff, so more in that regard. I mean most of the attacks were either win game/lose game straight up since no one knew what would win exactly and by how much exactly. So yes, there is more macro because you are constantly checking if you have a probe going at each base and then looking around at your nexuses (Nexii?) to see if you need to proton charge. And once I had like 3 bases going with proton charge and a 4th one going up on yellow minerals I literally couldn't keep up with my income anymore and was macroing like crazy trying to make more gates and pylons. And from there I went from like 80-100 supply in 15 minutes to 169 (last I looked, may have been the cap?) 200 in like 4 more minutes. And My apm is not trash either, I can pull like 200~
oh yea, I wrote "gg" in pylons while I was doing this in the middle of the map and I blackholed some noobs scvs at his min line. It was funny.
Also When I played inreach in a game he had crazy vicious zerg macro with queen larva and managed to make like 30 ultras in like 15-20 minutes off of 3-4 bases as well. It seemed pretty hard to expand, but I didn't go for storm.
Did you feel like thier were more, less or the same amount of macroing as SC1?
well for protoss probably about the same , it does depend if you are using warp gates however, as they require additional macro. For zerg it totally feels like you need way way more macro because you can't select a hatch and SD once to make 3 drones and in fact need to select queen and do the spawn mutant larva. So instead of 3x4 of SD we have; q- ability x4, then hotkey(3) sd,d,d,d,d,d,d,d,d,d,d,d, and even more if your trying to make lurkers or banelings because once you have your 12 lings/hydras you gotta select the group and go Lx12. I think this is a bit of a problem and might be imbalanced mechanically. But Like I said before it is great if you need to just make 1 overlord or pair of scourge (which isn't in the game) so you don't overcreate units.
On August 27 2009 10:05 CharlieMurphy wrote: you're welcome, maybe I should make a blog about my SC2 experiences, it's probably mostly unnoticed here in this thread.
Please do, your write up was so entertaining to read and it totally made my day, please write more about your experiences and thoughts!
On August 26 2009 06:58 Chill wrote: Get over it. The comsat isn't necessary in SC2.
I dont think we ever got clarification about this. Did people who played at Blizzcon use comsat less? If so why?
It shares energy with MULE drop (a super SCV of sorts to mine for you) and supply drop (permanently increases a supply depot by like 6 or 8). Also, to get the upgraded CC in the first place you need to spend 150 mins and stop making SCVs while it upgrades, which can be a bit of trouble early game.
On August 26 2009 06:58 Chill wrote: Get over it. The comsat isn't necessary in SC2.
I dont think we ever got clarification about this. Did people who played at Blizzcon use comsat less? If so why?
It shares energy with MULE drop (a super SCV of sorts to mine for you) and supply drop (permanently increases a supply depot by like 6 or 8). Also, to get the upgraded CC in the first place you need to spend 150 mins and stop making SCVs while it upgrades, which can be a bit of trouble early game.
So are you saying when you played it you didnt use it as often as you did in SC1?
yea that is one of the main reasons why I used mule less, i'm not really sure on the energy costs (in fact I never even checked what they were) but it seemed that a comcscan would always turn the mule grey and vise versa, so I ended up saving energy for scans since detection is such a bitch in sc2. (you need sensor and turret afaik.)