starcraft 2 beta motherfuckers

[Castanova]

God damn it, why can't I seem to get a beta key? You jerks!!

 

[Suicidal]

Maybe those hacker guys will add a crack for internet play later.

Even if I got a beta key I wouldn't be able to play, because I forgot my bnet account password and my secret question and answer for password retrieval.

Anyway, I'm perfectly content with playing vs AI for the time being.

 

[MetalCraze]

Is Turd AI 6.0 any good?

 

[relootz]

add me meleongrayza.zerotol

 

[Firewrks]

Is Turd AI 6.0 any good?

Main difference I noticed (after one game) is that the AIs have some different openings - they don't just rush immediately every time. It's alright, but...

God damn it, why can't I seem to get a beta key? You jerks!!

 

[Overweight Manatee]

God damn it, why can't I seem to get a beta key? You jerks!!

Is Turd AI 6.0 any good?

6.1 is finally approaching a half decent player. Good training for anyone new, hopefully in another week or so it will be good practice.

The cheating version is balls to the wall hard, it beats me about 2/3rds of the time. It doesn't really feel like a skirmish though, given all the advantages the computer has. 2x resources is ridiculous, they can rush and tech at the same time off a single base. It does really force you to scout them and react quickly to whatever their plan is, though, so I guess its decent to practice against.

Also, a new loader is up. Lets you select race.

http://darkblizz.org/Forum2/sc2-tools/starcraft-ii-beta-launcher/

 

[Castanova]

So should I just download the most popular SC2 torrent on, say, TPB? Or is there a specific one that I should get? Feel free to PM me.

Thanks!!

 

[MetalCraze]

Download the most popular torrent on TPB - it's ok. Let it patch then use launcher and whatever mods you wish - just visit darkblizz for all your seven seas resources

SC2 seems to becoming like a best RTS to come out in fucking years. Better than what it is even.

Is Turd AI 6.0 any good?

6.1 is finally approaching a half decent player.

As far as I know Blizzard provided only "very easy" AI in beta or something so that's good news.

 

[Monocause]

The official boards are fun to read. Dozens of people yelling at how overpowered things are.

One thing I can say is that the zerg need a rehash. The Terrans and the Protoss are done well and you need to use different units in your army to succeed. It's even better than in SC1 where I've seen many top players just spawn dozens of Dragoons.
The Zerg, however, are too easy to play with the roach&mutalisk combo. I've given it a try. I lost, but only because I'm not accustomed yet to zerg hotkeys, buildings and upgrades - but even with my zerg noobishness the protoss enemy had trouble with fending off the roaches. Had I built the spire like three minutes earlier (which I would with more Zerg experience) it would be an easy victory for me.

The problem here is that the Zerg could actually function as a playable and competitive race with only three units - zerglings for early eco harassment, roaches and mutas. Can't say that about any of the other races.

BTW, I fucking love the Void Rays. My favourite unit in the whole SC series, actually. Useless and expensive if you don't know what you're doing, a game winner if you do it right. Nothing like getting a couple off early and destroying the enemy main CC before he manages to kill you. It's a risky tactic but great fun.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

The official battlenet forums are lulz. Always were, always have been. Teamliquid has pretty good discussions, and people actually post replays so you can see how they handle shit that everyone else just cries about.

Hydralisks can be ridiculously awesome as well, and since they share the same upgrades as the roaches you can seamlessly switch between them as you progress.

Start with roaches -> enemy gets his first immortals/marauders to counter roaches -> you start spamming hydra's->enemy goes back to a more diversified build->you have upgraded roach regen and they start forming an invincible wall for your insanely high DPS hydra's. Do this while dual upgrading armor and missile weapons.

Also, Brood lords are kinda cheesy. Super high damage guardians, but the problem is their attack spawns broodlings (pretty much zerglings that die after 10 seconds). This provides a constantly remade health buffer for all of your ranged units that does even more damage. Then the siege tank's in the terran's back row fire on the broodlings and damage their own marine groups horrible, and the protoss colossos just wastes their huge AoE attacks (BTW: infestors are awesome as well earlier on mind controlling those fuckers).

Hatcheries are INSANELY easy to macro with, as soon as you take an expansion you can have it mining at near full capacity and your next wave 40 seconds later spawns a full 30 hydra group or whatever. I'm really liking Zerg ATM.

 

[relootz]

Monocause what is your name on battlenet

 

[Monocause]

Monocause.monocause

 

[Castanova]

Downloaded the beta. I wanted to be a Terran player so I picked them first against the Easy AI (StarCrack 6.1). Got raped in my first game. Got raped a little less in my second game. Won the third game. Maybe Terran isn't my thing? Switched to Protoss and dominated. Played some randoms and I dominated on my first attempt with Zerg too. Seems it's just like SC1 where Terran is a bitch when you first start.

I don't feel like there's a go-to early game strategy for Terran. Marines suck unless you build like 10,000 of them. Marauders are expensive. Reapers suck except for harassing.

Sentries are fucking amazing. I can see using them every single game, throughout the game.

 

[DraQ]

DAMN ITS ABOUT TIME.

This is actually the only rts I am looking forward to. Not because I dislike the genre or anything its just that Blizzard is the only company that still delivers.

Haters gonna hate.

dum dee dum

 

[Overweight Manatee]

I don't feel like there's a go-to early game strategy for Terran. Marines suck unless you build like 10,000 of them. Marauders are expensive. Reapers suck except for harassing.

Sentries are fucking amazing. I can see using them every single game, throughout the game.

Wall off with supply depots + barracks. Spam marines out of one barracks with reactor, spam marauders out of another with tech lab. If you are up against protoss, add in ghosts for the EMP rape (mass sniping spam works decent against zerg as well, but that takes a ton of micro). Push out once you have a comfortably large force or once you get 2-3 medivacs to heal your troops. Expand at the same time and rewall up if that expansion has a choke (in fact your first wall can be blocking off your expansion is some times, meaning you can then expand really early and rape hard.

 

[Castanova]

Fair enough but doesn't that basically concede the early game to your opponent? I mean, a Zerg is gonna fast expand regardless but I feel like it could be suicide to let a Protoss expand with no resistance.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Fair enough but doesn't that basically concede the early game to your opponent? I mean, a Zerg is gonna fast expand regardless but I feel like it could be suicide to let a Protoss expand with no resistance.

Terran has always been the defensive race, most of the time they don't need as many expansions as their enemy. Less true in SC2 then SC1, but it still holds.

If your enemy fast expands, they have pretty much no army to pressure your own expansion, so get yours up fairly quickly. Your choice is always to either get yours up immediately, and live with the fact that he may be 10-30 seconds ahead of you, or go for a quick attack to take his advantage while you simultaneously expand yourself. Riskier, but can put you in the lead if done right. As soon as you get 3 or 4 marauders you can probably press him pretty hard, doubly so if you get a ghost as well. Or quick tech to hellions and just go to town ass raping probes/zealots.

Supposedly Terran is statistically the weakest race atm, Blizzard has been buffing them a bit. I think its more due to the fact that players are new, terran has always been about defending a lot and then pushing out at the critical moment where your enemy's build is weakest and yours is strongest. With the state of zerg and protoss builds in constant flux, its hard to know when to do that.

EDIT: Here's a more detailed overview of the build
Here's almost the same thing, against Zerg

 

[Castanova]

Interesting, thanks. It looks like that Zatic build is out of date, though. Apparently it was developed prior to Orbital Command. Still, food for thought and the Orbital Command opening on that site looks promising too.

The other issue is I always manage to screw up the choke point wall-in with Terran.

 

[L'ennui]

Installing now. Is there any way to play MP? Not on battlenet, of course, but locally, or IP to IP?

 

[Castanova]

No, unfortunately. Not even in the real product.

 

[MetalCraze]

Just you wait. Jolly Rogers emulated BattleNet just fine and they will emulate CattleNet.

 

[Castanova]

That'd be nice if someone hacked in LAN play. Although, I'm not sure my old computer can handle this game. Looks like it has the bare minimum requirements at best.

I've been watching a lot of replays/vids on Youtube. I have to say, the quality of play at the platinum level is clearly inferior to SC1 play. I suppose it shouldn't be terribly surprising since the game is relatively new but still - there are a ton of platinum matches with minimal scouting, minimal harassing, minimal fighting. Everybody kind of pokes around a bit then settles in and the two players basically gift each other an expansion while they build an army. I feel like it's pretty clear that someone more skilled could come in and win like 95% of their platinum games.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

One of the groups is supposedly making some good progress on a battlenet replacement. Dunno much, they like to be hush hush so noone else can steal their work.

The other issue is I always manage to screw up the choke point wall-in with Terran.

Do you have the building placement grids activated? Makes wall-in's a piece of cake, I've had 100% success from my first game.

I've been watching a lot of replays/vids on Youtube. I have to say, the quality of play at the platinum level is clearly inferior to SC1 play. I suppose it shouldn't be terribly surprising since the game is relatively new but still - there are a ton of platinum matches with minimal scouting, minimal harassing, minimal fighting. Everybody kind of pokes around a bit then settles in and the two players basically gift each other an expansion while they build an army. I feel like it's pretty clear that someone more skilled could come in and win like 95% of their platinum games.

Little scouting/harassment is because people don't know the builds and strategies well. In SC1 you can tell the difference in a person's build based on whether he puts down a god damn pylon 10s earlier or not and ridiculous meta-game stuff like that. Give it a few months. If you watch some of day9's videos, you can see some of the great detail he goes into when he goes through some of his replays, pointing out how to figure out tech switches and stuff.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmes ... _id=104154

There are actually a huge number of players currently winning 80-95% of their games in the platinum division. And thats with hundreds of games played, its not some lucky streak. But those percentages are steadily going down as everyone learns more of how to play. Frankly from what I've heard in the beta, as long as you had even a mediocrume of competitive talent SC1 you automatically have a spot in platinum in SC2 just because there are so many hapless game journalist and WoW noobs running around. A friend of mine only played singleplayer SC/WC3 along with UMS maps like tower defense and shit, he's in gold division.

 

[Monocause]

Earlier on I've thought that I should play games with random races to get a feel of all of them. I came to realise, however, that I don't enjoy playing the Zerg and the 'toss are still my fav race. Finally I've decided to specialise.

Played like 10 games today, improving build orders and devising tactics. Dark Templars are awesome, at least in the copper league. Rushing DT coupled with the 3x warpgate tactic has proven to be a great choice. Considering how simple it is to counter the more experienced players will probably have no problem to defend against me (to be more precise, I don't believe that an experienced player would allow me to "rush" DT, he'd just destroy my defenceless base before I'd manage to build the templar archives), but in the CL it works wonders.
Another nice thing - you build the aforementioned 3xWarpgates so the enemy expects a ground force when he scouts you. However, you build a pylon away from your main base and place 1x robotics, 1 or 2 stargates and the templar archives +dark shrine. Get at least three void rays, an observer and a couple of DT. Use the observer to find the enemy army, use the void rays to destroy the accompanying detectors (if any, detectors are rarely found in the copper league) and use the DT to wipe the floor with whatever he prepared to counter the zeals&stalkers he expected.

The tactic needs some adjustment vs. the terrans for obvious reasons (comsat). I did it by mixing the army with a couple of zeals and stalkers, so that the terran player didn't notice the DT instantly. When he kicked in the comscan 15 seconds later, his M&M was obliterated by my five DTs, three zeals and two stalkers.

An even quicker version: Three warpgates, a warp prism, dark templars who cripple the economy. Use void rays if you expect detectors or cannons/turrets. Did I mention I fucking love void rays? :D

 

[a wild nigger]

PvP is fucking gay at platinum level (dont know about others), it's 3 warpgate -> proxy pylon -> zeal v zeal.

Especially on Blistering Sands where you can put a Pylon outside the rocks and warp zeals into their base.