SC2 BETA In-Depth: The TvT matchup

Introduction
Yesterday while I was in a stressed mood, I decided to play some SC2. I just wanted to wreck something.

First game I played was a PvP, but I contained and then out-macroed him without too much effort. Fun with Colossi. : )

The second game however, was insane. It was a TvT, on a 4 player map, and took 45 minutes before the loser conceded. NOTE: all the information about the opponent is accurate because I ended up watching the replay.

I had chosen Random, so my opponent didn't know what I was.

Build Order
As with all races, the first thing you should do is have your gatherers start mining first. You start off with 6 workers now and that mining time difference is more important than getting your first worker out sooner than your opponent.

I am the red terran in the 7 o'clock position and he was the blue terran in the 8 o'clock position.

First thing I do is gather minerals with SCVs. Then start making an SCV. From SC, I had gotten into a habit of hotkeying (h) everything, so I hotkey my CC to 2-9 and an SCV to 1. Then I rally the CC to a mineral patch to start mining, and make another SCV. I keep up SCV production well into 20-30 SCVs per base, depending on the build, for good saturation. I have yet to use the MULE, but that's because I'd rather have energy for scan. Scan is pretty much the exact equivalent to Scan in SC. The MULE is a way for the Terran player to offset economic differences in production against the other two races (Zerg Queens extra larvaue, and Protoss' Nexus' Chrono Boost).

Around SCV 8 or 9, I use the SCV on h1 to drop a supply depot- I'm going for speed to macro, so no wall-in or anything. Hotkey another SCV to h2. As soon as the supply depot is done, I begin scouting with SCV on h1 and move h2 out to build a Barracks. Then I drop a refinery. I subconsciously send the scout clockwise based on the map structure, and I find him immediately. I do some waypoint evasion (when you shift+right click around their base to keep them chasing you), and I notice that he doesn't have either gas yet and a barracks a little slower than mine.

Crazy Gambit
So, like a crazy guy, I jump back to base (hotkeys for speed), put 3 SCVs on gas, and jump back to his base to start 2 refineries on each of his gas geysers. I only build them up to about 120 HP each so that I can cancel them and get the resources back. I jump back to my base and start a factory ASAP, hotkey Barracks on 3 and make some defensive marines.

The Premonition
He begins to attack my refineries in his base with 1 SCV each. At least it took some time away from his SCV mining time and gas gathering. Before I cancelled them, I noticed a second barracks. I built another barracks myself and began to Tech Lab them both.

Each of the military unit buildings (Barracks, Factory and Starport) has 2 potential add-ons: Tech Lab and Reactor. Reactor allows you to double the production of that building. Tech Lab allows for higher level tech from those buildings. But you cannot have both- so you'll have to choose: faster production of basic units or access to better units. As I've noticed, I feel like it's typically better to go for higher level tech units and research pretty much all of the time- unless you're doing some crazy rush build. This is why I did not get any Reactors.

I amass a small army of Marine+Marauder (the new M&M I guess; so if it included Medivac, would it be called M&M&M?), and a couple of Reapers while getting an Engineering Bay to upgrade them. I put them all in a single control group (I did an experiment with Zerg- and there is no size limit to a control group any more, where I had 300+ units on one hotkey; only possible because of overlords). I left some tanks at home to defend and then I started my second CC at my natural expansion and moved out. I typically use keys 1-2 or 1-4 for military strike groups, depending on the rest. I use the rest to hotkey buildings. With MBS, it becomes easier to manage and distribute production. Just note that buildings with Reactors are somehow treated differently and the unit production is not distributed in the same way.

Armageddon
At this point, my opponent had already gotten 3 Medivacs, 2 tanks and a bunch of marines. He saw my army advancing so he loaded up and flew over to my base to drop 16 marines and 2 tanks in my base.

I believe he made this decision to throw his army at me because of the early pressure that limited his gas- hence he dedicated to medivacs and tanks, and just used marines so he wouldn't have to spend gas.

I had learned from watching pro games that when something like this happens, the worst thing you can do is to retreat. I'm at the front of his base and he would have demolished me whether I retreated or not. So the only option? I have to go into his base and deal as much economic damage as possible.

I'm still macroing units at my base, and since his troops hadn't completely encroached on my production buildings' positions yet- I rally them together to make a final stand. He lingers farther away as I continue to mine. Back at his base, I work my way up his ramp through almost nonexistent defenses and I begin to attack his economy immediately. He sends his SCVs at my army, but they just melt to marauding blasts. I believe I kill each and every one of his SCVs, and destroy his CC and clean up most of his military buildings. I do notice my CC being destroyed and immediately send my SCVs to my natural expansion. I rush to build another barracks and factory while the other SCVs mine. I'm trying to bank as much as possible because his forces still seem like a formidable force. As a double backup plan, I run 2 SCVs to the 1 and 2 o'clock bases and start CCs as soon as he finds and destroys my natural CC.

I clean up his newly created CC and destroyed all of his buildings in his base (last ones being 2 refineries; late to come up, late to go- LOL).

Recovery: me
At this point I'm paranoid. I have scouted almost every other location for a base via flying buildings or a unit in passing- and I haven't seen any other buildings. He clearly had something else because he was not yet eliminated. At the time, he also had a larger army than I did. I had SCVs, a few marauders and a couple of marines. He had at least 10 marines, 2 medivacs, and 2 tanks left. So, as you can see, I was in trouble. I picked one of my two bases to start my new base. I get a barracks down ASAP, and then a bunker and 2 supply depots to wall off. I had built up 8~ish SCVs, so I was fine for recovering economically. The last things I saw were medivacs and marines. So I surround my base with turrets.

Then followed almost the longest silence I had experienced. It must have lasted for at least 10 minutes. We didn't see each other. Nobody made a move. I sensed that he must have had another CC somewhere, so I asked him "Do you have an income?"

Recovery: him
He scoured the map for me with his units. He was at about 18/11 with one floating CC. I managed to escape with it and set it up at the 1 o'clock position for double gas for a while.

He on the other hand, had a smaller bank, not taking in resources, and no SCVs to speak of- with the complicated situation of being at 18/11 (3 medivacs, 2 tanks and 5 marines). How the heck was he going to deal with this?

Painstakingly, he realizes he has no choice and kills off his 3 medivacs- which leaves him plenty to make an SCV. Luckily there was more than enough for a couple of supply depots. He is now making an income. He creates MULEs and gets a second base. After some slight security, he moves his tanks to brood around the entrance to my new base (the 2 o'clock position) and camp there. He has a better economy than me at this point.

Good Morning Breakpeace
I had teched up to dual Starports because I had seen Medivacs and tanks- so clearly a flying assault unit was a logical tech choice. Little did I know, that he did the same thing. However, I was trying to build Banshees, which only attack ground- and he was amassing Vikings.

For those of you who have not heard about the Viking, it is one part Goliath, one part Valkyrie, and one part transformer. Builds from a Starport as the basic air unit that has the ability to ground itself. It can attack air to air, or ground to ground, and so it has the mobility of a Wraith, but the attack power of a marauder (slightly better).

He lands at my gas expansion and destroys it outright. I begin to panic and ramp up production. He immediately flies in and lands about 14 Vikings by my CC. Luckily I have turrets in my base that take care of a few before they land. I manage to save about 7 SCVs (lucky number!) and take care of most of the threat with 2 Banshees and a tank, leaving about 6 enemy Vikings not able to do much. I mop them up with Banshees and marines.

Inspiration
At this point I realize... "Wow, he's throwing away a lot of expensive units." Well, they're cheap air units, but not as cheap as turrets and marines. He goes in for one big strike with another 12 Vikings, but I manage to hold out with 2 Banshees, 2 Vikings and 5 marines. My barracks and factory are burning- but I am able to save them in plenty of time.

Economically speaking, he was far ahead of me. He had a bigger bank, bigger income. What did I have? I had a "cheap spending" plan, and better average APM than him. I made medivacs and marines, and a tank. I successfully defend against another onslaught.

Redemption
My resources begin to wear thin. I know that I have no choice but to mount an offensive. I do not know what I will do, as I feel that he is economically ahead (he actually was by about a factor of 3). His food count was nearly 3 times mine. His resources in the bank were around 2000/2000 to my 150/150. If his macro was slightly better- he would have defeated me effortlessly. Luckily for me, I kept up my macro throughout, and a lesser position was able to overcome because of the enemy player's contentedness.

I had a very small plan, but hopefully it was going to have large impact. Earlier when I had made a Banshee, I sent it out in hopes of glimpses of the enemy. I had found one base. I was not sure if it was the only one- but it was worth a shot in destroying it. I loaded a Medivac up with 6 marines (max capacity was 8- but I wasn't sure why I didn't fill it up). I fly over to his completely undefended economic base and drop the marines behind the mineral lines and start killing.

He had been amassing units in my natural for a while. At this point he throws everything he has at my ramp in a seemingly last ditch effort to clean me up. He has marines and medivacs. My bunker and 2 supply depots hold the ramp for my tank to dish out the heaviest of damage. My bunker barely holds as an SCV repairs it at 10 HP.

After that battle, I have obliterated his only real economic base as his other one is emptying out and another CC he had begun had no saturation. I had an army and he just sent his at me today.

"i concede" he tells me.
"gg"

All I have to say back is "GG"

Conclusion
I'll be the first one to admit right now- I should not have won that game. He should have. But between luck, persistence and mind games- I was able to get him to concede to me. Then I thought about the game and came to a few conclusions.

There are some units we were not able to explore in depth. Each of us were also unfamiliar with upper tech unit abilities. That could have changed the game immensely (Ravens and Ghosts notably).

Next, we didn't see any huge heavy hitters (Battle Cruiser and Thor).

With that aside, assume that Battle Cruiser and Thor is too expensive to be practical early/mid-game or any game that is close. Ravens and Ghosts are support units that can turn the tide of battle, but they are usually not the core of the terran army.

The rest of it- is. I sense that infantry builds will be the strongest in TvT. Tanks are good, but they're not as insanely good as they used to be. They're a bit bigger and a bit slower. The Hellion is fast, but hardly a replacement for Vultures because there aren't any mines, and they're not as cost effective as vultures. Terran mech has Thor for anti-air, but other than that, they must use marines or other air units to assault/defend in the air. That's the weakness of Terran mech, and I predict it won't be used purely. Mech will augment existing forces. M&M is so powerful early game- and there are 5 Starport units to choose from. I forsee both infantry and air builds in TvT (assuming the units remain the same when release comes around).

Starcraft 2 BETA: my story and initial review

DISCLAIMER: Note, this is a BETA. Any and/or all of the observations made here may or may not be included in the final release. Starcraft and all references herein are owned by Blizzard Entertainment.

How I Came Across a BETA Key

Shortly after Blizzcon '08, I was feeling a little down for reasons related to my personal life (and odds are it had something to do with women too). Luckily for me, I had some awesome friends who went to Blizzcon and they gave me a feel better present.

"Here Nam, this should make you feel better," and he hands me a card and I look at it. It's a card with a BETA key for Starcraft 2. At the time, it made me feel a little bit better, but the reality didn't hit me yet. I would like to thank my friend Zubes for giving it to me. Thanks man.

It was the same when some of my other friends gave me a pre-order copy of SC2 for my birthday... in '08. It's actually been on pre-order for so long that I changed some of my verification information since then.

BETA Starts

I got word from my Starcraft enthusiast brother (7 years younger than me- but stays way more informed on SC happenings than I do) gave me a phone call to notify me that the SC2 BETA was live last week on Wednesday (2/17/2010). Awesome! It was confirmed by my friend who works at Blizzard later that day. That night I pulled out my BETA key card and registered my key and created a new battlenet account.

The tense part was the wait. After you register your key, you had to wait until Blizzard sent you a SC2 code to download the client. I waited 48 hours and finally decided "they'll send it to me whenever they'll send it to me."

Needless to say, I was not disappointed. Not more than 5 days later, I got an email on 2/22/2010 at 8:47pm saying "Congratulations, this is your invitation to the beta test for Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft® II: Wings of Liberty™!" Unfortunately I was out that evening and didn't get the email until about 11:15pm.

At that time, I immediately used the code to download the client. It was over one and a half GB and downloaded at about 1 MB every 3-5 seconds. It took over 2 hours. It was a weeknight and I needed to go to sleep so I could go to work the next day... but I wanted to see if I could play one game before I went to sleep. I started the install, and that took more than an hour- at which point I gave up and went to sleep (it was well past 3am).

I planned to wake up the next morning early so I could go to work early so I could leave work early to go home and play SC2. I told some co-workers about it and they told me that I had "some discipline." I went to work, thought about it all day (except for when I was thinking about my girlfriend of course!), and then drove home.

First Impression: GUI

I logged into the game and found the GUI to be pretty clean and smooth. I actually missed some of the old sound effects because I've played SC for probably a decade now, but the transition between screens is less jarring/sudden.

I feel like the buttons respond as expected. They are stylistically thinner, longer buttons than in the first game, but they work well.

The in-game control pane is very similar to the previous game and intuitive to anyone who has played SC before. The observable menu gives you game options and help. The most useful part for strategizing is actually included in the game menu. It has a chart of each race's tech tree and a list of units all the units (with counter unit strengths and weaknesses). The only thing you seem to be missing is the upgrade/ability list.

The New Battlenet

Don't take my word as the end-all be-all, because I really only briefly looked at it. But the new battlenet system seems really good. Joining a game is a heck of a lot less hassle. Creating a game is easy as 1-click-2-click-3-click (there are a limited number of maps included in the BETA, but I imagine the map pools in the future will change the meta game as they are created and released).

For the BETA, they gave you practice games before they start rating you for "placement." Which I assume they would put in a group/bracket with people your own skill level. I think this is a great system because then you eliminate the gradient in skill level. Let's hope it actually works the way I think it does.

When creating a game in the BETA, I found out that you could wait for a human to join, or add a computer AI. If you added AI, only "Very Easy" difficulty was available. There were several speed settings, but the relevant ones seem to be "Fast" and "Faster". I am unsure of the 1v1 or 2v2 games can be created in the BETA. Once in, you may choose your race (as always), color and a handicap percentage. Everyone starts off at 100%, so I imagine if you choose a lower percentage, you will have more difficulty, however that percentage translates into the game (I did not experiment with it at all). As the game loads, it will show you a map preview with indicated spawn point and you can briefly plan your strategy.

First Game

Before the first game I played, I did not know that I could play a single player game against a computer. So I ended up playing against a human. It was a TvT on a 2 player map. I tried to do an early contain with a bunker contain outside of the enemy's natural expansion. I seemed to hold back the enemy pretty effectively. I applied pressure with Siege Tanks and eventually lost my hold. However, I took that opportunity to expand with a second CC.

After gaining the economic lead, the rest of the match was quite elementary as I just overran the opponent with a variety of units.

After it was over, I figuratively jumped for joy and looked at the statistics. Some of the same statistics from the first game are there, but the most notable addition (to me) was the build order tab. It allows you to compare any two players' build orders with time indicator up through the first few minutes. This will prove greatly important for hardcore strategists, pro players and SC/RTS enthusiasts.

General Gameplay Observations

Things that are similar to the original SC.

The races are the same. Some of the units are the same. There are units and buildings and you try and use it to defeat your opponent.

Things that differ than the original SC.

Instead of depending on just sounds alone, there is a text list that shows up on screen that notifies you of what has just finished (construction, research, unit creation, and other game notifications such as "Nuclear launch detected"). Very, VERY useful.

Many hotkeys have been changed. Some are no longer intuitive, but I understand what they were trying to do. If you get the chance to look through all the hotkeys, you'll notice that they are all mostly on the left side of the keyboard. I think this is done to reduce overall movement across the keyboard for speed and efficiency. Once you learn the hotkeys, I think your play will be better overall.

The F1 key helps you find idle resource gatherers. Other RTS games had this functionality already, but the first SC did not. They finally put it in, and it's useful.

Vespene geysers when depleted no longer yield any gas. This changes the economy of the game quite a bit. Cost of units and buildings have been scaled to be a multiple of 5 because resource gatherers now carry 5 resources (as opposed to 8 in SC) each trip.

"Smart" rally points for resource gatherers have them auto-mine when the rally point is set to a mineral patch or vespene geyser (with appropriate gas structure atop it).

Multiple building select- allows you to hotkey many buildings to one hotkey. You're probably wondering how they curbed the hotkey advantage for certain buildings with certain races? Well, I think their solution will take some getting used to, but the best situation that they could have come up with. If you want to me 5 units, you have to hit the hotkey 5 times. Even if you have 5 buildings selected, you must tap the hotkey 5 times to create 5 units (it does intelligently distribute production to idle buildings).

Cloaked/hidden/burrowed units are no longer detectable. You will not see a distortion where the hidden unit is. It is purely hidden from view without a detecting unit. There are still 2 detectors per race: one static structure and one mobile flying unit (as before).

One of my favorite new mechanics: you can queue up many actions in a unit's waypoint. In the first SC, I wanted to build buildings in a waypoint to queue them up (like scouting/evading patterns) but I could not. Now you can! Make plopping down 5 pylons all at once immensely easier.

Things that I thought were really cool additions.

The game will tell you when it thinks your computer is causing slowdown in the game! It suggests to close unnecessary programs and applications. AWESOME. You will no longer accuse everyone else of latency. It'll just freeze and everyone just waits.

When you're playing a game against a computer AI and you clearly defeat it- it will auto chat "gg" to you to indicate its surrender before you destroy every building!*

* For those of you unfamiliar, GG is an acronym for "Good game" usually messaged at the end of a game to informally signify the end of it. In Korean e-sports, this tradition eventually became the official signal from a player to indicate conceding of the game.

The Races

Luckily for you guys, I enjoy playing as all three races. I believe it helps get a better overall understanding of the game, and eases future strategizing. However, I was only able to play 6 games (3 VS "very easy" computers just to explore the tech tree of each race, and 3 practice games against humans).

I do not believe I can review the differences of each race yet, but give me some time and I should be able to. Let me just say that there are a TON of different units for each race, a TON of different upgrades and a TON of ridiculously crazy abilities.

I sense where this game is trying to take the Starcraft franchise to a place where it is less dependent on macro skill than micro skill. The abilities seem to play more of an important role in this game than before. But macro is still important because the change in economic momentum seems to differ enough that the economics I feel are more sensitive to harassment and tempo. I predict that many will find this game very fun, albeit different than the first one.

Whether it'll be as big as the first SC, no one knows. That's speculation. I decided to leave the decision for years down the line, after they patch it to make it perfect. Until then, it seems as though it's decently balanced enough for the casual player for now. I can't wait until the Koreans get a hold of this and show us how it's really done.

I hope you enjoyed. Thanks for reading.