Derf is getting fed up with SC2 to some extent...he (rightfully) gets pissed off at lamers trying things like the photon cannon rush. (Protoss will send a probe into your base right from the bat and start building a pylon, then tons of photon cannons until he reaches your base. You often don't have the time to make the units necessary to destroy the photon cannons in time)

What irks me the most about it is the fact that it doesn't make any game sense. Sending in a few really early units and trying to damage your opponent's economy permanently or even destroy it, yes. That makes sense. But building defensive structures in your opponents' base from the first 2 minutes on is just unforgivable cheese and should be stopped by Blizzard. And it's SO easy to execute and often so effective so it's very popular.

Me, I rage and fume and rage some more but I rarely ragequit. It's the same in TF2. If it doesn't go well I just go into a huge rage but I tend to keep playing.

We've been trying a new tactic which involves Derf pumping out marines and me roaches, while I scout the enemies' bases with changelings. Then I secretely build a Nydus worm entrance in the back of my base as Derf moves his marines to the front ramp of the enemies' base (often heavily defended). I make a surprise tunnel into the back of the enemies' base and pour out my entire army right into their production and start wreaking havoc - the moment I notice they pull their troops back to take care of my attack I give Derf to go ahead to storm the front gate. Hasn't failed us yet. I started using a similar tactic in 1 vs 1 and it works pretty well.

As Terran/Terran we did a succesful marines + siege tanks attack. I feel we're getting more flexible in our strategies which is helping us. But yeah, the cannon/bunker rushes are ghey.

Yeah but i don't really like the idea of being very flexible in this game cos I don't enjoy moderate levels of micromanagement.

I don't mind varying a proven strategy, but jumping to different strategies on the fly requires too much clicking for me personally. It starts to turn into an action game, as opposed to strategy in that case. Which I conceptually have no objection to, but the game is sold as a strategy game. You build buildings, you develop your economy, you make units, you fight. These key 4 elements are often lost in SC and replaced with micromanagement and exploits. I think the design decision was to facilitate 30 minute games and therefore balance the abilities and units accordingly.

A separate thought... Ox, in the spirit of the game, I think we should try to play as double protoss and use the photon cannon rush for a laugh. But the difference being that someone pumps the other guy his resources, which means more cannons. I'm kinda assuming this isn't already what the rush involves, but if not, we could have a guaranteed winning formula?

I've actually considered that "strategy" too. if one of us just mines like a whore without doing anything else and the other one just sends a probe out from the 1st second, we could create an unstoppable lamer rush that would at least rid of us of one opponent in a matter of minutes. I'm up for giving it a shot for the heck of it. I'm gonna watch the Belgium game tonight first so won't be before 22h your time tho.

Re: the micro, I do consider fending off the early rushes as micromanagement but just adapting strategies depending on our opponents is not very micro imho. I didn't mean making armies of 5 different unit types and managing them all on the attack, more like picking a strategy depending on what the other guys are doing. As a Terran you are incredibly versatile as it is, with almost every unit capable of attacking both air and ground. If I scout well (better) we should be able to develop a complementary strategy without overly microing shit.

Strategy for you Derf

http://www.mysc2vids.com/Unconventional ... ress-rush/


Dual planetary fortress rush?!

Starcraft 2 is rapidly descending into a spiral of frustration in our 2 vs 2 games.

For a game that has been in beta so long there are some serious MP imbalances and lame-ass tactics that spoil a lot of the fun. Some telling signs are that in our many games so far we have

- never met a team of two Zerg
- often meet teams of two Terrans

Terrans have virtually no weakness. In fact, when microed they have no weakness apart from the fact that they can't use some of the other races' special abilities (but that is less of weakness than a racial thing). They have the best ground defense with bunkers (marines + marauders) and siege tanks, the best anti-air turrets, the best base unit (Marines), almost all of their units can hit air and ground (marines, vikings, battlecruisers, Thors), have field healers, can scan without any risks and have the best allround end-game unit (battlecruisers). It's freaking ridiculous.

I'm not counting the liftoff of their buildings as a 'strength' because that's just racial advantage (as frustrating as it may be for my roach/zergling attacks). Either way...Zerg have no static defense means other than spine crawlers that are strong but can only hit one target a time and are slow (so extremely vulnerable to group attacks), pretty crappy basic units that need overwhelming numbers to be effective (zerglings), only two very light and expensive units that can hit ground and air, no means of healing in the field AND any scouting you do is pure micro and can be easily countered by an attentive player (as opposed to the Terran scan which can't be countered in any way).

We also found, after Derf checked some game stats, that a lot of them are reading off a build order sheet and rigidly sticking to it. They know exactly what they're gonna build and when every minute of the game. Way to be creative. Like Derf said yesterday, there hasn't been ANYONE who ever did something that made us go "oh wow that's clever". No one. It's just massive armies or extreme cheesecake.

Photon Cannon rush...ftl. Ban this sick filth.

Yeah it's very frustrating for that exact reason. Our losses are determined by factors that are not strategic. It's mostly knee-jerk or pot luck.

Next time though Ox, let's try 2 different things:

1) ALWAYS attack together
2) Pool our defensive forces in one common chokepoint in the early game

If we did that last game, we may have had a chance.

I think we would have had more than a chance, I'm convinced we would have raped them. So agreed.

I think i've sussed this game out and have gotten to the end of my tether. Winning is really fun, but not in a stimulating way, more like "yeah, fuck you, i whooped your ass". Losing is just too fucking frustrating, for the same reason winning isn't so great. You lose for reasons that are devoid of cunning.

Today, for example, we lost because the enemy expanded early and managed to collect 2x more resources than us, which means more units and more kills, resulting in eventual victory. So how might we have prevented this loss? Answer is, by scouting and destroying the expansions.

The only way for me to KNOW that they're expanding is to send a gatherer unit and have him sit on the expansion area. I can't send a marine, because you REALLY need those early units to defend against rushes or front attacks. Even if you send a gatherer, the opponent could easily just build the expansion in another area, and sending gatherers to all different areas is out of the question. It will kill your ability to get a decent economy.

So spotting an expansion in time is probably 25% likely. Given that it's unlikely to happen, this isn't a viable option. Alternatively, you could counter the risks of an enemy that's expanding early, by expanding early yourself. BUT, you leave yourself open to a rush, which happens (or is at least attempted) 50% of the time. To counter a rush, you need as many early units as possible, which means you can't expand. Okay, so you could do a rush yourself, but if the enemy is also rushing, there's a 50% chance of winning. If he's prepared for a rush, there is 0% chance of winning and if he's expanding, then you could win, but spotting that expansion is 25% possible and the strategy itself is chosen by the opponent maybe 25% of the time.

So basically, the difference between winning and losing, is mostly down to lady luck. You just need to roll the dice and choose a strategy. Whether it works, depends on the strategy your opponent has chosen, and that's it. It's basically rock paper scissors.

Also, in retrospect. This game is REALLY fun as a MP beginner, because you haven't quite understood the mechanics, and neither have your opponents. So winning is still 50/50 but since you're using trying things out, the process is VERY creative.

Derf is making a very good point. Unless you know what your opponent is up to at all times you can almost always end up being countered by a unit type that rips the shit out of your units of choice. For one, unless you are a master scout or your opponent is sloppy (which they rarely are) you have absolutely no idea what he is up to towards the middle game.

You'd think just to sacrifice a fast air unit into his base to see what he's doing, and yes, that CAN work, but that would also imply having to build an air production facility + air unit which is costly and almost useless if he goes for a ground army that has decent air counter (like marines). The money, production time and supply you just lost may very well mean the difference between life and death early game.

So it often comes down to rolling the dice. You go tough ground units without AA and he goes air? You're fucked. But if you try to rush to air and he goes mass ground, OR you save a little on your no-AA ground units early on to put some air turrets up and you're fucked too. Or: you don't immediately put up detectors/train detector units and he attacks your base with stealth units. Even just one can do enormous damage. Fucked. But if you spend the early game focusing on detectors and he doesn't use any stealth units at all, they're useless. Ugh.

So yes, it's like a giant Rock Paper Scissors system. The only way to circumvent is to be a micro KING with mixed unit groups. But even that is risky on the lower levels since players will very much rush you with a one-unit type army which will steamroll a mixed force if it isn't max effective vs that army.

Btw, did you guys know Derf is actually in the gold league in 1 vs 1?

*jealous*

I won 3/5 of the placement matches, but I think they must have seen my economy stats and slammed me into Gold league for it, rather than thinking I was actually good.

For the sake of being judgemental, i'll assign this game a rating (2 out of 5).

The first is for overall polish. The second is for the excellent early playability.

I can't assign a 3rd because that implies longevity which is something the game doesn't really have. It could be achieved if there was better facilitation of scouting.

I could always go Terran and be your scouting wingman.

Build a command center or two, pimp them to scanners, and constantly scan the shit out of our opponents. I'm gonna give that a try next time.

Oh so basically a recon-whore-&-build-counter-units strategy.

Could do, but it's useless vs a flat-out rush, and maybe also useless vs early-ish mixed unit rush.

I'm interested to see if we can scan & take-out expansions in time or if we're able to judge whether it's safe for ourselves to expand.

Maybe worth a shot, but given that rushes account for maybe 50% of losses, it may be slightly futile.

We can also try a new Zerg strategy. I've built mutalisks in 2 games in 1 vs 1 (had to) this weekend and it was very effective in keeping air/map dominance early game once they group, since they are lighting fast. The only unit I met that absolutely rapes them so far is Thors - they have AoE AA missiles which are devastating to the tight groups of light armored mutas.

They are mostly excellent for scouting and scoping out expansions. I would send zerglings to all empty mineral fields and bury one or two of them within (burrowed) sight of a potential base expansion. So I instantly know where an enemy has expanded to and can quickly scope out the situation.

You may want to consider producing a more fast-response unit type next to your marines. Doesn't have to be a huge force, just something that can counter relatively minor (but annoying) threats more easily than your slow ass marines, like when a few void rays or mutas get in the back of your base.

I think burrowed zerglings at every expansion point is a very good idea. But not as a number 1 priority for he early game. Reason being we need those units to defend vs rushes.

So you think the mutalisk could be a good choice for all-round use? Remember the idea is that we scout the enemy and identify their unit choice before we make ours, but yeah, until were able to make that decision, i guess mutalisks for you, and marines for me could be a good choice for general duty.

As for fast response, I suppose those jetpack marines would be a good choice to deal with undefended expansions. They might be cheaper and more efficient than a paradrop. But I don't like the idea of making a fast response unit to deal with enemies in the field. Outside of expansion-raping, i would only concentrate on defensive units or baseraping units.

As for defending against void rays, i think marines are quite good at this. I just need to keep a medium sized group at my HQ.