4. New Player Help

Since it's the first day of retail, and I've been playing against some new players who haven't quite got the hang of the game, I thought I'd help out and post a few some tips, tricks and a few build orders to help you guys out. I'll start out with some standard all purpose build orders for each race.

(What the build orders mean- When you start out you have 6 probes/scvs/drones, keep pumping them until you have the first number then build that.. For instance the Protoss standard would be keep pumping probes til you are at 9 supply then build a Pylon as the 9th probe is being made.. Then keep pumping probes again and while the 12th probe is being made, make a Gateway)

 Protoss 9/12
9- Pylon
-Chronoboost Nexus as Pylon completes
12- Gateway
-Chronoboost Nexus as the first wears off
14- Assimilator
16- Pylon
16- Cybernetics Core

Then continue building probes.. start building zealots when the gateway finishes,  adding on more gateways (or robo facilities or stargates as the situation dictates) as you have excess money. You usually want to expand when you have the advantage in army.
Note: A fully saturated mineral field can support about 4 gateways/warpgates


IdrA's Opener (Zerg)
9- Overlord
14- Spawning Pool
15- Hatchery at natural expansion
16- Queen
16- Extractor
18- Overlord

Then produce as many Drones as you can get away with. This build is fairly weak to cheesey all in rushes like a 6-pool zergling rush, but with scouting you should be okay if you scout. You may want to alter the build if you suspect being harassed early by getting Zerglings instead of Drones after the spawning pool comes out.


Terran 1/1/1 Build
10- Supply Depot
12- Barracks
13- Refinery
15- Orbital Command
Marine+ 2nd Refinery
16- Supply Depot
Optional: reactor or tech lab on barracks
@100 Gas get factory

When Factory completes get starport
The beauty of this build is that it allows you to quickly get one of each unit producing structure in the terran arsenal, hence the name. It allows you to quickly respond with whatever composition you need. Add on more unit producing structures as the situation dictates.


Tips and Tricks for new players

1. Scout early and often- Usually around 9-12 supply you'll want to send a worker to go check out the enemy base, try to keep tabs on what he is building and get a feel for what composition you need to make.

2. Don't forget to build workers!- I've seen a lot of new players with resources score half of what it should be on one base. Pretty much the only time you want to cut making workers is when you're gearing up for a push, cheesing or are already saturated. Other than that ALWAYS MAKE WORKERS. A good practice is to keep your nexus/hatchery/command center on a hotkey

3.  Micro. Pay attention to things like choke points, ramps and open areas and try to realize what position it would benefit your army to fight from. Turn health bars on and micro dying units and try to save them. You'd be surprised how often you can win an uneven battle by microing.

4. Use rally points.. Rally your Nexus/Command Center/Hatchery (Orange Line) to your mineral field and the drones will automatically start mining.During a push Rally your unit producing structures (White Line for Hatchery) to your army so they automatically start heading toward them and group up.

5. Don't put all your units in one control group. I usually put Melee units in 1, Range units in 2 and Casters in 3 Air Units or Special Units like Warp Prisms I usually put in 0. Put your buildings in groups, for instance I put my Barracks as 4, Factories as 5 and Starports as 6 when playing Terran. But do what works for you.

6. Watch your replays when you lose. Try to pinpoint the exact time you started to lose and why

7. Play often and play to get better. Doing the same exact thing and expecting different results is insanity - Albert Einstein. Try to experiment and see what builds, unit compositions etc. work in what situations. Don't just do the same exact thing every game in every situation.

8. Don't be afraid to lose. When you say to yourself, If I attack I may lose, just try it out if you aren't sure. Losing is part of learning and getting better. After awhile you will KNOW if you will lose or win with the attack.

9. Try to control Xel'Naga watch towers. The extra vision is SO good.

10. Spend ALL of your rescources. Having high mineral count doesn't make you good, you want to stay as close to zero as possible while continuing to produce workers.

7/27/10

2. A Quick Guide To Upgrade Your Rig For SC2

The system requirements for Starcraft 2 have been out for awhile now, but just in case you need a quick reference to them I'll repost them here.

PC Minimum System Requirements*:
· Windows® XP/Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 (Updated with the latest Service Packs) with DirectX® 9.0c
· 2.6 GHz Pentium® IV or equivalent AMD Athlon® processor
· 128 MB PCIe NVIDIA® GeForce® 6600 GT or ATI Radeon® 9800 PRO video card or better
· 12 GB available HD space
· 1 GB RAM (1.5 GB required for Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 users)
· DVD-ROM drive
· Broadband Internet connection
· 1024X720 minimum display resolution

PC Recommended Specifications:
· Windows Vista®/Windows® 7
· Dual Core 2.4Ghz Processor
· 2 GB RAM
· 512 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GTX or ATI Radeon® HD 3870 or better
*Note: Due to potential programming changes, the Minimum System Requirements for this game may change over time.

Mac Minimum System Requirements:
· Mac® OS X 10.5.8, 10.6.2 or newe
· Intel® Processor
· NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT or ATI Radeon® X1600 or better
· 12 GB available HD space
· 2 GB Ram
· DVD-ROM drive
· Broadband Internet connection
· 1024X720 minimum display resolution

Mac Recommended Specifications:
· Intel® Core 2 Duo processor
· 4 GB system RAM
· NVIDIA® GeForce® 9600M GT or ATI Radeon® HD 4670 or better

For a brand new game, the system requirements are fairly low. Any rig built within the last 5 years or so SHOULD be able to run it. My brother was running SC2 fine on low settings on a Pentium 4 2.0 ghz cpu (Well below the system requirements) with some crappy FX 5600 I think it was . It worked great in 1v1 matches on all low settings until you got upwards of 150+ supply at which point it was still very playable but a little choppy. My main rig was using an 88000gts 320mb and a E6400 Duo core 2.14 ghz cpu, The default settings for the gpu were all damn near ultra!. It was capable of running everything on high-ultra in 1v1 matches without being choppy. I never really pushed it in 2v2+ because I was afraid of it overheating, an issue I had when playing Heroes of Newerth. Most people on hardware forums I've visited say that 4GB of RAM is the sweet spot for most gaming rigs nowadays, so keep that in mind. Also, I'm not a hardware nut, I'm just sharing my experiences with you to save you the trouble of registering and posting in tech support forums or the like. Hope I help at least someone. :-)

For all the people who know their computer won't run SC2 but are still trying to play or are just generally trying to upgrade theirs, I thought I'd link some useful articles from tomshardware.com. This site has been really useful while I was helping my brother upgrade his PC to run SC2 at a higher level.

Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart

Best Graphics Cards for the money- July 2010

Best Gaming CPUs for the money- July 2010

The GPU and CPU are the most important parts of your computer so I'll just link these, but definitely check this site out for any advice on updating your rig.

Oh, and for those of you who still run 2002ish era pentium 4 rigs and on an extremely tight budget, you can get a 3.0ghz cpu for around $40 from various sites and a graphics card capable of running SC2 on low settings for around $40 as well. 8400gs just for example. My secondary rig uses a radeon 4650 which was $55, I could have gotten a better gpu, but my secondary rig is a Vostro 220s i got for cheap and only has a 250w power supply. Nice thing about this card is that it's low profile too and fits in a slim case.

7/24/2010