Been playing (and loving) starcraft2 beta, focusing on Terran as my race of choice. They are a fun race and have a lot of different things at their disposal. I’m still very “green” but I’m having a lot of fun. I really need to work on my building design (for chokes) and just buildings in general (when to make more, when to expand, how to make sure I spend all my minerals). I have a decent grasp on early game Terran, pushing with marines/mauraders, and adding in some medivacs/tanks depending on what is going on. However after that my game gets quite a bit more cloudy as the battles wear on, what do I build end game for those ultimate battles? Well now more than ever I need to find some answers to that because they just put out pretty large change patch for the beta and wiped our stats! Here are some highlights on my thoughts on the changes.
--They doubled the build time of the reactor (building upgrade to produce two units at once) and on top of it upped the build time of actual Marines by a few seconds. The net result has been an increase in me building more mauraders and usually having a smaller army than I otherwise would have. Its harder to fend off a rush as well. I play most of my games getting three barracks having two with tech lab and one with reactor but on occasion would get two reactor. To do that now takes a really long time and probably isn’t worth it, also I can’t see it ever being worth it to make a reactor on your first barracks unless you are certain you won’t get attacked, just takes way too long. I think these changes were to stop some cheese marine/scv rush but I never knew how to do that anyway hehe.
--Tech lab gas cost reduced from 50 to 25. This is nice for early game building a tech lab but later on not a big deal. However it does make reaper rush is a little faster now. I may try a strategy where I pump out 4-6 of these then rush. As for now my typical build one of them rush comes out a little faster and that’s pretty nice. Those buildings are then set to build mauraders later.
--Reduced gas cost allows for Vikings and ghosts to be produced a little easier. Not too big of a deal but its still cool. I need to find a much better way to use Vikings though, to me they die way too fast and it doesn’t feel like they pack as much anti air as you would think they should. Being able to land them is cool but slow and micro intensive.
Other notes on some things I tested and matches I played:
--One guy sent a early probe to my base and threw me off hard core. He attacked my scv making my first barracks. The problem was it was at my choke, so after a few seconds I had to take my scv and send him back to my mineral line then replace him with another to continue building. This made it take ages to get my first barracks up. If I attacked him with a scv or 2 he just ran, soon as I tried to build he came back. All the while he was wasting my scv’s time and stopping me from building. It was pretty damn effective. A friend suggested taking another scv and repairing the first, that might work. Other thoughts are taking another scv to attack him. Either way one of his guys basically wastes the time of a few of my workers just to get rid of him.
--Medivacs can airlift Thor’s one at a time haha! I didn’t know if they would be able to pick them up but was messing around and they can. It basically turns them into a giant metal box under the medivac, looks pretty cool!
--Due to the ladder reset I got matched up against some players that were way out of my league last night haha. It was fun though.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Starcraft 2 Battle Report 3
Getting a lot better with Terran now and having a lot of fun with them. Here are some highlights/thoughts of my recent matches:
--In some matches I try to pop out a quick reaper or two for harassment. My micro is not quite up to par on it yet but it can be pretty strong when done right and seems to make the enemy build more base defense then they actually need. Then when I roll in with my big army I have more men than them, this tends to be a nice way to win (at low levels I'm playing at).
--One match I played the zerg had roaches and burrow super fast, they hid them in between our bases. He thought he was going to use the burrow and quick heal of the roaches to take the advantage, and it might have been ok had he gotten the move while burrowed ability. But he didn’t have that yet. In any case he popped out, my army was larger, then he popped back down and up a few times before figuring out that wasn't going to win. In retrospect I could have used a scan to kill them all before moving on to his base, but at the time I just figured I would take out his base before he got mine (plus I had an expansion). That's pretty much what happened, fun game though!
--I love siege tanks, even 1-2 of them in the back of my marines/maurauders seems to make a massive difference in the battle given I drop them to siege mode at the right time. I don't always get them, but I've started using them better when I do get them and its been working out nicely.
--Most my games I go triple rax with either two tech labs (for more mauraders) or two reactors (for more marines) depending on what I see the enemy doing. Then I grab one factory, sometimes upgrade for siege tanks I guess it depends on what is going on, other times just get a star port after and build some medivacs. I will eventually start trying more off the wall builds but this basic strat seems to be pretty successful and a good way to start off to get the hang of Terran.
--In some matches I try to pop out a quick reaper or two for harassment. My micro is not quite up to par on it yet but it can be pretty strong when done right and seems to make the enemy build more base defense then they actually need. Then when I roll in with my big army I have more men than them, this tends to be a nice way to win (at low levels I'm playing at).
--One match I played the zerg had roaches and burrow super fast, they hid them in between our bases. He thought he was going to use the burrow and quick heal of the roaches to take the advantage, and it might have been ok had he gotten the move while burrowed ability. But he didn’t have that yet. In any case he popped out, my army was larger, then he popped back down and up a few times before figuring out that wasn't going to win. In retrospect I could have used a scan to kill them all before moving on to his base, but at the time I just figured I would take out his base before he got mine (plus I had an expansion). That's pretty much what happened, fun game though!
--I love siege tanks, even 1-2 of them in the back of my marines/maurauders seems to make a massive difference in the battle given I drop them to siege mode at the right time. I don't always get them, but I've started using them better when I do get them and its been working out nicely.
--Most my games I go triple rax with either two tech labs (for more mauraders) or two reactors (for more marines) depending on what I see the enemy doing. Then I grab one factory, sometimes upgrade for siege tanks I guess it depends on what is going on, other times just get a star port after and build some medivacs. I will eventually start trying more off the wall builds but this basic strat seems to be pretty successful and a good way to start off to get the hang of Terran.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Starcraft 2 Battle Report 2
I switched to playing Terran for a night and boy did I get romped. The build order and way you produce units seems way different then SC1. I'm still noobing it up quite a bit but I did notice I am significantly weaker with Terran than Zerg right now. Anyway, I like the race a lot though and I think it could be one I'd like to master and make my main anyway despite the early issues. Their units are fun, look good in game, and I like a lot of the options and things they have. Here are some interesting highlights and lessons from the night.
--When you get an orbital command, you probably should spam the special SCV guy it can make, the amount of extra minerals you can get from this is pretty huge especially early on.
--The protoss sentries shield move is pretty sick when used on a choke. In one game I played I had massed my army in my main, they went to my expansion just below it and were able to force field the choke effectively not allowing any of my units down the ramp while they blew up my expansion easily.
--Zerg banelings can blow your marines up fast. I think everyone knew that but I wasn't really prepared for them. Either need some bunkers or better micro to stop it. One match he rolled in with some of those, blew up most all my army, I did eventually defeat him with scv's but then he came in shortly after with mutalisks to finish me off.
--There are a lot of fun off the wall strategies with Terran. I have yet to try them all but I did have some success with one. I walled off my choke with buildings. Made a few marines for defense. Teched strait to starports and build 4 banshees (air to ground) and one Raven (air caster unit). Flew strait to the back of protoss base, used the raven to cast two of its anti air shot towers (they block attacks against my units) as the 4 banshee's took down their nexus. It was pretty sick and I really was super slow doing it so could have been a lot better.
All in all I had fun with them and think I will be playing them more. I am still stronger with zerg but that's not saying much at the moment lol.
--When you get an orbital command, you probably should spam the special SCV guy it can make, the amount of extra minerals you can get from this is pretty huge especially early on.
--The protoss sentries shield move is pretty sick when used on a choke. In one game I played I had massed my army in my main, they went to my expansion just below it and were able to force field the choke effectively not allowing any of my units down the ramp while they blew up my expansion easily.
--Zerg banelings can blow your marines up fast. I think everyone knew that but I wasn't really prepared for them. Either need some bunkers or better micro to stop it. One match he rolled in with some of those, blew up most all my army, I did eventually defeat him with scv's but then he came in shortly after with mutalisks to finish me off.
--There are a lot of fun off the wall strategies with Terran. I have yet to try them all but I did have some success with one. I walled off my choke with buildings. Made a few marines for defense. Teched strait to starports and build 4 banshees (air to ground) and one Raven (air caster unit). Flew strait to the back of protoss base, used the raven to cast two of its anti air shot towers (they block attacks against my units) as the 4 banshee's took down their nexus. It was pretty sick and I really was super slow doing it so could have been a lot better.
All in all I had fun with them and think I will be playing them more. I am still stronger with zerg but that's not saying much at the moment lol.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Starcraft 2 Battle Report 1
Few interesting notes from my first night of action in SC2 Beta. I played zerg in all my matches this night.
1v1 – 2 wins 1 loss
2v2 – 1 loss
Lost my very first 1v1, I was producing units wayyyyyyyyy slow and basically just got outnumbered. Expanded too early and my build order was fairly crappy.
Then I won the next two. One against a Terran who once I saw that he was expanding I rushed. Beat him with a superior army. He did the age old Terran trick when losing early game of launching his base into the air and sticking it in the corner so I had to wait for air to finish him off. I had overlords at every single mine spot on the map so it wasn't like he'd be able to rebuild anywhere. Eventually we both just laughed about it and said gg.
Third game was zerg vs zerg. I actually lost the initial encounter when I tried to rush him as he expanded. He had more roaches than me. I tried to micro a little bit to focus his down faster but it wasn't enough to over come the unit advantage. Still it was a close fight so he had maybe 3-4 units left in the end, not enough to rush me back since that fight was in his base. I expanded and we both built our armies back. Both of us had roaches/mutalisks and corrupters. I think I had more corrupters than him and when we had a big army clash I was able to win that battle and take the game. In retrospect I should have saved the replay on that one to see what the army sizes were.
Lastly played one 2v2. I really love the group strategy aspect of RTS games. Unfortunately I'm new to SC2 and my partner sucked so we got stomped. We were both zerg vs a protoss/terran team. The cool part about the game was on this 2v2 map there was a choke point in front of the team base where our enemy actually turtled up with cannons and teched. My teammate also seemed to do that only I didn't see him with very many good units lol. The protoss player went MASS void rays which was pretty interesting since they are considered kind of underpowered. With a mass of them though they blew stuff up fast and looked quite awesome doing so. Even my corrupters and muta's were not enough. I think our major downfall though was not sticking together and fighting at the same time, we basically sent our armies in to attack the enemy but his zerglings got there first by themselves and got wiped, then we trickled in the rest of our guys. Wasted a bunch of our units like that, also fought seperately in the next big fight, needed a lot more coordination hehe.
1v1 – 2 wins 1 loss
2v2 – 1 loss
Lost my very first 1v1, I was producing units wayyyyyyyyy slow and basically just got outnumbered. Expanded too early and my build order was fairly crappy.
Then I won the next two. One against a Terran who once I saw that he was expanding I rushed. Beat him with a superior army. He did the age old Terran trick when losing early game of launching his base into the air and sticking it in the corner so I had to wait for air to finish him off. I had overlords at every single mine spot on the map so it wasn't like he'd be able to rebuild anywhere. Eventually we both just laughed about it and said gg.
Third game was zerg vs zerg. I actually lost the initial encounter when I tried to rush him as he expanded. He had more roaches than me. I tried to micro a little bit to focus his down faster but it wasn't enough to over come the unit advantage. Still it was a close fight so he had maybe 3-4 units left in the end, not enough to rush me back since that fight was in his base. I expanded and we both built our armies back. Both of us had roaches/mutalisks and corrupters. I think I had more corrupters than him and when we had a big army clash I was able to win that battle and take the game. In retrospect I should have saved the replay on that one to see what the army sizes were.
Lastly played one 2v2. I really love the group strategy aspect of RTS games. Unfortunately I'm new to SC2 and my partner sucked so we got stomped. We were both zerg vs a protoss/terran team. The cool part about the game was on this 2v2 map there was a choke point in front of the team base where our enemy actually turtled up with cannons and teched. My teammate also seemed to do that only I didn't see him with very many good units lol. The protoss player went MASS void rays which was pretty interesting since they are considered kind of underpowered. With a mass of them though they blew stuff up fast and looked quite awesome doing so. Even my corrupters and muta's were not enough. I think our major downfall though was not sticking together and fighting at the same time, we basically sent our armies in to attack the enemy but his zerglings got there first by themselves and got wiped, then we trickled in the rest of our guys. Wasted a bunch of our units like that, also fought seperately in the next big fight, needed a lot more coordination hehe.
RobWild State of Gaming
I've still been playing champions online all this time and enjoying the game. It has many flaws regarding end game but fortunately it provides many cool things for the early levels in terms of customization of your charactor and abilities. I find that once they reach 27-30 they feel complete, and end game doesn't offer anything I want to strive for. However despite all that I'm still there, grinding away my latest creation with a friend. I'm not sure how much longer the game will last but its been a good game to play anyway and I'm happy I decided to play it.
All that being said, there are some great games coming out on the horizon that I'm sure will pull me away. In a stroke of good luck one such of those games in beta fell into my lap. I got a starcraft 2 beta invite from a friend at work. This is a game my friends and I have been waiting for for a long time. Its great to be able to try it out. As I have only played it once so far in the beta I will try to detail out some things about my games and what I learned as I go here.
All that being said, there are some great games coming out on the horizon that I'm sure will pull me away. In a stroke of good luck one such of those games in beta fell into my lap. I got a starcraft 2 beta invite from a friend at work. This is a game my friends and I have been waiting for for a long time. Its great to be able to try it out. As I have only played it once so far in the beta I will try to detail out some things about my games and what I learned as I go here.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Loving Champions Online
Charactor creator is awesome and game play is pretty cool to me. If you enjoyed City of Heroes or City of Villains at all you will like this game I would think. Here's a quick write up I emailed to a friend about how I came up with one of my latest designs, its really cool what you can do with this game.
So first I wanted a certain power set, I decided it was down to darkness, electricity or fire. I had a decent concept for darkness guy, but I took a closer look at the powers and honestly there aren't whole lot in there, so you would definitely have to mix and match more. I liked fire and elec, but elec just had more initial stuff that I was like oh, I want that. So that's how I settled in on elec.
Then I started playing with options. Great thing about the creator is you can just mess around until you hit that "piece" and you're like ok, I like that, I want to design something with that. For Buzz it started out with the fly wings (looked cool and were custom to game stop customers). I found I was having trouble matching a head to it. Didn't want the bug head (only one and eh), non of the animal heads were very good, and I was having trouble making a human head feel right. Then as I was looking at hats I just happened to chance on the skeleton head. I was like hmm, that looks really nice with the hat and actually looks ok with the bug wings (since bugs are kind of boney anyway).
After that I checked hands real fast, found they had a skeleton hand too! I liked that a lot and thought it looked pretty cool. Also at some point had settled in on that trench coat. It looks pretty fitting with the hat and wings and I liked how the skelly hands came out of it. Basically after that matched some nice pants and filled in the details. The feet are actually cyborg feet completely colored white, they didn't have a foot skeleton option unfortunately. Still I liked the feet enough and I think pretty much no one can tell they aren't actual bone feet unless they are looking super closely.
Anyway so I started digging the design of the guy a lot, then I thought damn, how am I gonna make this guy fit with the powers I want to use? I kind of immediately thought of the movie the fly, how he meshed with an insect, except in this case the guy meshes with the insect and one of those electric fly traps, that's how he gets his powers (also how he turns into a skelly I guess lol). Its pretty creative and yeah a little stretch, but I'm liking it.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Champions Online - Man I hope this is improved CoX
So I'm going to pre-order the Champions online game and hope to be able to play open Beta soon. Man this game looks so cool, I LOOOOOVED the character creation of City of Heroes and Villains, nothing in any other game I played has been so great. You really could design the most awesome toons, and when a friend or two and I design together well we get an awesome themed team. So fun to play that way and so fun just to look at the epic powers you could use. In those games you really felt epic, you could wipe HUGE piles of enemies and travel powers made you feel well, powerful.
Anyway there was a lot done right and wrong in City of Villains and Heroes, here's hoping they take the good and improve, and take the bad out. Add some more variety to the pve, and make pvp actually work (if possible lol). I'm looking forward to this game a lot, not sure if I'm crazy like lifetime subscription looking though, but if open beta shows me the improvments I want I could see making this game permenant for me.
Anyway there was a lot done right and wrong in City of Villains and Heroes, here's hoping they take the good and improve, and take the bad out. Add some more variety to the pve, and make pvp actually work (if possible lol). I'm looking forward to this game a lot, not sure if I'm crazy like lifetime subscription looking though, but if open beta shows me the improvments I want I could see making this game permenant for me.
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