Support NeoGAF

[KuroNeeko]

Just curious, but when you sign in to SC2 for the first time, do they give you the option to choose your Bnet region or is it chosen for you?

Anyone know just how bad the lag is when playing outside your region?

I'm stuck in Asian which means fewer games with gaf members and more arse whooping Korean opponents...

 

[Fragamemnon]

Moved up 20 or so places in my league today over 13 games. Lost some dumb ones but overall pretty happy.

I love the game, but I hope it continues to move away from where it is now-too much one-base play due to the macro mechanics and too numerous "hard" counter units. Modern SC is basically automatic fast expand in every matchup except the Zerg and Protoss ones, right now everyone is rushing and while I can do that too pretty well (actually, very well IMO), holding off some of the rushes is rough.

I'm really starting to dislike the MULE as the Terran mechanic-you get a ton of minerals and, due to the HUGE gas costs of all things non-bio, you get these weird biomechanic/bio+air army mixes that are a pain in the ass to upgrade. It's terrific for fast expanding, but right now the builds that reliably fast expand are really rough compared to the one-base builds.

 

[Sloegr]

I love the game, but I hope it continues to move away from where it is now-too much one-base play due to the macro mechanics and too numerous "hard" counter units. Modern SC is basically automatic fast expand in every matchup except the Zerg and Protoss ones, right now everyone is rushing and while I can do that too pretty well (actually, very well IMO), holding off some of the rushes is rough.

I'm interested in seeing how this shapes up over the upcoming months and years. I enjoy the fast expand style of gameplay so much and would hate to see it severely diminished.

 

[IcedTea]

I'm interested in seeing how this shapes up over the upcoming months and years. I enjoy the fast expand style of gameplay so much and would hate to see it severely diminished.

I think it is just a product of people now knowing how to deal with rushes properly yet. Remember the first day or two when you could just mass a few Reapers and win? Remember how people thought Roach rushing was unstoppable for a bit? People discovered how to deal with that sort of thing. Give it time.

 

[Fragamemnon]

Roaches are still pretty ridiculous for a hatchery-tech unit. I don't mind the armor or the regen, but the damage needs about a 20% haircut or so.

Though you can definitely deal with it if you know it's coming. That being said, one-base roach rushing will probably win more than it loses right now up until you get to the really decent players in the higher ranks. Marauders are pretty over the top too IMO, should cost a little bit more or something to get out.

 

[Sloegr]

I think it is just a product of people now knowing how to deal with rushes properly yet. Remember the first day or two when you could just mass a few Reapers and win? Remember how people thought Roach rushing was unstoppable for a bit? People discovered how to deal with that sort of thing. Give it time.

Oh, I'm not panicking just yet. I realize that metagame shifts can be drastic, especially early on. I've just grown fond of a certain playstyle, and there's no guarantee that it will ever be replicated. If it isn't, I'll move on and enjoy the game as is, but I'll still miss the FE style.

 

[oxrock]

Roaches are still pretty ridiculous for a hatchery-tech unit. I don't mind the armor or the regen, but the damage needs about a 20% haircut or so.

Though you can definitely deal with it if you know it's coming. That being said, one-base roach rushing will probably win more than it loses right now up until you get to the really decent players in the higher ranks. Marauders are pretty over the top too IMO, should cost a little bit more or something to get out.

I'm a little worried about merauders being a useless unit quite honestly. The in game chart shows each factions initial t1 units being counters to it which renders it at least slightly ineffective, add the fact that it's defenseless against air and I'm not sure how viable it is.

Edit: As opposed to double posting I figured I'd ask my question here. Does anyone know where I can find a listing of all the scII shortcut keys?

 

[Ice Monkey]

marauders are roach defense, and have stim so go perfectly well with m&m. what more do you want to do with them? they are anti-armor! AND they only cost 25 gas which is AMAZING because in every effing game I run out of gas and have 5000 minerals so the mineral cost is nothing.

 

[FoxSpirit]

Well that's why we've said there's something fishy going on. I was going to post it on their forums...but maybe since it seems to be a work in progress maybe I should just leave it be for now. My contention is that they haven't implemented all the GPU shaders yet and are doing a lot of the work on the CPU. Some shaders haven't been implemented period (not even on the CPU) like SSAO (the setting does nothing).

I need to get a bit of evidence together and get it all organized so it doesn't get discarded too easily.

SSAO... for a change, they really went all out on the tech side.

 

[syoaran]

marauders are roach defense, and have stim so go perfectly well with m&m. what more do you want to do with them? they are anti-armor! AND they only cost 25 gas which is AMAZING because in every effing game I run out of gas and have 5000 minerals so the mineral cost is nothing.

Had a TvT game this morning - 20 Marauders in medivacks, sent them accross to his base . GG. Honestly at the start I thought this unit was a bit weak in the overall game, but micro'ing them for the correct target (Zealots/Roaches/Stalkers) is just amazing. How do I best backup and attack (I've seen that a lot in battle reports, but can never nail it)? Tips?

Nice to see that Terrans base building was buffed a bit. I'm hoping that Vikings get a HP boost soon however, its silly how quickly they loose against Carriers even in a 2v1 situation =(

 

[Calavera520]

SSAO... for a change, they really went all out on the tech side.

Could someone explain SSAO in lay terms? I watched a video but it didn't really explain much.

In what way does it affect image quality?

 

[Trasher]

Xenobladex and exodu5, the HoN community will miss you :`(

Play with us still from time to time guys?

 

[Sh1ner]

Could someone explain SSAO in lay terms? I watched a video but it didn't really explain much.

In what way does it affect image quality?

basically its all those soft shadows on the character in real time and the scene around him.
In the past its been painted directly onto the character and on the scene before hand so it looked ok throughout the game, but lets say if the character went underneath a spotlight, the soft shadows wouldn't change.
The SSAO name is a technical term for how its rendered, if I find any good youtube vids with it on and off I will update this post.

edit: I cant seem to find any good videos with it on/off, but heres a link to an article with some pics at the bottom of the artlce with it on and off in currant games:

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...eta-Ambient-Occlusion-in-comparison/Practice/

edit2: also if anyone interested in the techy geeky stuff, I just stumbled upon this breakdown from blizzard regarding starcraft2 using google:

http://developer.amd.com/gpu_assets/S2008-Filion-McNaughton-StarCraftII.pdf

It breaks down on the techniques they used and why, I just had a quick look through it

Simple answer, it gives the map and characters more depth using lighting

 

[TheExodu5]

^One thing to note, SSAO doesn't currently work in SC2. Take some screen shots at Ultra and Extreme...no difference. Also, the only thing Ultra seems to get over High is translucent shadows (which I don't necessarily prefer for the performance drop it gives).

Roaches are still pretty ridiculous for a hatchery-tech unit. I don't mind the armor or the regen, but the damage needs about a 20% haircut or so.

Agreed. Roaches are far, far too good for a Hatchery unit. Is there a single ground unit in the game that wins against them in a straight resource matchup?

Could someone explain SSAO in lay terms? I watched a video but it didn't really explain much.

In what way does it affect image quality?

Are you in a room with 4 corners right now? Look towards the corners of the wall. See how the corners are darker then the rest of the wall (unless lit by direct light)? That's because of ambient occlusion. SSAO mimics that.

 

[Freki]

Agreed. Roaches are far, far too good for a Hatchery unit. Is there a single ground unit in the game that wins against them in a straight resource matchup?

perhaps immortals? at least thats the "official" counter to roaches as a protoss from what i have seen in livestreams.

 

[TheExodu5]

perhaps immortals? at least thats the "official" counter to roaches as a protoss from what i have seen in livestreams.

That's pretty late game though. Maybe Marauders win in a resource matchup?

Thing is, Roaches are way better than Maurauders in an overall capacity. They're not gimped against either light or armored units. They have really high damage for their cost. As a first tier unit they're good, not necessarily saying they need the nerf there...but once they get burrow and move while burrow, they just seem too damned good for 75/25. A Hydralisk is even with a Roaches in a straight 1on1 matchup, which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it.

I might be overreacting though...I haven't countered them or seen anyone counter them effectively yet. My main problem is that I play as Zerg and there's no way to counter Roach spam except with Roach spam.

 

[chris-013]

Protoss can tech really fast to immortal, you just need to know how to defend your choke.

 

[GregLombardi]

So with the latest patches, was anyone all of a sudden able to turn everything up to its highest and have IMPROVED performance?

I run an NVIDIA 8800 GTS, Dual Core 2.4 ghz AMD 4 GB of RAM

And it pretty much is running highest settings without a hitch at this point whereas before there were a lot of problems.

 

[TheExodu5]

:lol

some of that is pretty funny

:lol

Yo Mommaship's so fat she made Jim Raynor say "That's no moon!"

So with the latest patches, was anyone all of a sudden able to turn everything up to its highest and have IMPROVED performance?

I run an NVIDIA 8800 GTS, Dual Core 2.4 ghz AMD 4 GB of RAM

And it pretty much is running highest settings without a hitch at this point whereas before there were a lot of problems.

I was under the impression that I got improved performance but it's hard to tell since I can't use the old replays with the new update. I haven't really ran any tests yet. Been having too much fun playing.

 

[Orangepeel]

Not that I would know or anything... but just keep restarting... it's random

Ohh, I just had really bad luck with terran in a row three times lol.

 

[Kodiak]

I wonder If I've gotten owned by any of you guys yet. I go by Batchi on SC2. I've been doing pretty good this morning relying on marauder rush.

I had this one hillarious game where me and my 2v2 partner decided to just spam marines. We had a huge force roll out and in the middle of the map we ran into the enemy team who had also decided to spam marines.

And the other team immediately goes "you too?" and a huge firefight commences but my firepower upgrade popped and we wiped them out.

It then turned into an arms race. Easily the most epic game I've played so far.

I love this game so much.

 

[nilbog21]

Honestly, this is torture

 

[PhoenixDark]

Bit of a tech/computer question. Yesterday I launched the beta and after a few seconds my screen went blank with a no signal warning, before coming back up with this error:


"VPU Recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics driver commands. Please tell ATI about this problem"

Looked it up and found out it may be driver related, so I uninstalled the driver/rebooted/re-installed. Didn't have any problems for rest of the day, but the next day (today) I got the error the first time I launched SC2. The game still runs with no problems but I'm still kinda worried about this. Anyone else getting this error, or have advice?

edit: I have a Radeon 3870 card

 

[aznpxdd]

That's pretty late game though. Maybe Marauders win in a resource matchup?

Thing is, Roaches are way better than Maurauders in an overall capacity. They're not gimped against either light or armored units. They have really high damage for their cost. As a first tier unit they're good, not necessarily saying they need the nerf there...but once they get burrow and move while burrow, they just seem too damned good for 75/25. A Hydralisk is even with a Roaches in a straight 1on1 matchup, which is kind of ridiculous when you think about it.

I might be overreacting though...I haven't countered them or seen anyone counter them effectively yet. My main problem is that I play as Zerg and there's no way to counter Roach spam except with Roach spam.

Although I haven't encounter a Zerg player spamming Roaches yet, I'm pretty sure MMM + stim will take care of them no problem.

BTW, what's the site with the SC2 units details again?

 

[Kodiak]

This HD starcraft on youtube channel is awesome!
really helpful for a newb like me to see a skilled player at work with a bunch of helpful explanations.

definitely making the wait at work more bearable. : p

 

[aznpxdd]

Are there any good replays of Z using roaches? I'd like to take a look.

 

[Kodiak]

yeah the one I'm watching right now (AKA waiting for it to load) is focusing on roach micro.

http://www.youtube.com/hdstarcraft

 

[Hazaro]

Are there any good replays of Z using roaches? I'd like to take a look.

I think you'd be much harder pressed to find a player winning without using Roaches. :lol

No. Seriously.

*Anyway you'll have to wait a while since the updates makes it so old replays are unwatchable (so I have heard). All those 100 replaypacks people made :[ (I guess you could install to a new directory and patch up manually though?)

 

[TheExodu5]

*Anyway you'll have to wait a while since the updates makes it so old replays are unwatchable (so I have heard). All those 100 replaypacks people made :[ (I guess you could install to a new directory and patch up manually though?)

You can't play replays with new updates, but the game gives you the option to launch the older versions to play them.

 

[TheExodu5]

yeah the one I'm watching right now (AKA waiting for it to load) is focusing on roach micro.

http://www.youtube.com/hdstarcraft

If you notice when he gets his Lair and is pushing into the enemy's base...if he had have teched burrow he could heal them all to full health in about 10 seconds.

Great replay though. Will teach newer players a lot of lessons. Definitely shows that massing an easily countered unit is not the best thing to do.

He was wrong near the end though: Stalkers are the early Protoss counter to Roaches.

 

[Ice Monkey]

Had a TvT game this morning - 20 Marauders in medivacks, sent them accross to his base . GG. Honestly at the start I thought this unit was a bit weak in the overall game, but micro'ing them for the correct target (Zealots/Roaches/Stalkers) is just amazing. How do I best backup and attack (I've seen that a lot in battle reports, but can never nail it)? Tips?

Nice to see that Terrans base building was buffed a bit. I'm hoping that Vikings get a HP boost soon however, its silly how quickly they loose against Carriers even in a 2v1 situation =(

agreed about the vikings, they need a lot more power for anti air, at least when it comes to carriers. What did people do to counter carrier/arbiter in SC1?! Carriers seem unstoppable.

In regards to backup and attack, that's my terribly weakest point by far. One thing that may help you to get used to it though is kiting zealots with reapers, I've been able to do that plus you can really out maneuver them with cliff jumping. I think SC2 is much different than SC1 because it seems the pathing and attack AI has improved enough that ranged units in range will seemingly always get off an attack, so you can probably only successfully kite like this against close combat units.

Agreed. Roaches are far, far too good for a Hatchery unit. Is there a single ground unit in the game that wins against them in a straight resource matchup?

Don't forget that zerg is almost 100% being shoved into a very ground-centric race, even more so than SC1 because of hydras moving to tier 2. Until lair tech with hydras, which aren't terribly cheap don't forget, they have no AA whatsoever except for spore crawlers. And mutas are nice but very expensive considering how fragile they can be against AA or other air units. corruptors just suck unless you use their building cripple attack.

With enough detection, roach burrowing is easily out maneuvered, can't tell you how many games i've played against zerg and ran around with an overseer and a few mutas and slowly picked them off, but yeah they are hellish regardless. detect your choke and the only way roaches get in is through nydus which is a whole different beast altogether.

Every terran should get used to walling off his choke, build 4 marauders behind that and you can pick off roaches all day long. And marines are hella cheap for what they can do. Stalkers are good for anti roach too, every PvZ match should arguably have the toss player tech stalkers quickly just to counter roaches. Again you really have to utilize chokes in this game, because if you don't then your mineral line is gone, especially against smart zerg. stalkers have longer range than roaches, so you can park em on top of the ramp and pick them off all day long. Stalkers have bonus to armored just like immortals , but immortals are just dominating against roaches because of the 50 dmg to armored.

Although I haven't encounter a Zerg player spamming Roaches yet, I'm pretty sure MMM + stim will take care of them no problem.

BTW, what's the site with the SC2 units details again?

You're lucky! you're right, marauder and medivac can do a lot of damage to roaches and the marines will do some good stuff too. especially with stim.

 

[DemiMatt]

Up till 2am with SafetyFirst, damn we pwned it up in 2v2.

We had 1 game go to 45 minutes long, us double toss vs zerg and terran.

They went ultras, broodlings, and zerglings, then vikings, marauders, and marines with medivac.

I went stalkers, colussus, immortals, and templars, and safety when Carriers, and we both had motherships. They expanded all over the map and we both turtled in, then jusdt went for the kill. I had to remote mine since I didnt have enough $ for an expansion. It was awesome!

 

[Fragamemnon]

BTW, I've b een annihilating zergs going pure roach with a marauder (from 2 rax w/ lab) and marine (w/ 1 reactor) with a fast +1 weapon/stim timing attack. You obviously don't have the kind of endurance for a long fight but the +1 greatly mitigates their armor bonus and you'll rip them to shreds. Then it's just a matter of microing down the roaches and A-moving into their base and killing their tech.

This is what I use against the one-base, no expand play where I scout the roach warren on my first scout after barracks. Against fast expand (you see the expansion hatchery when you scout) I do a bunker rush outside of the hatchery sight range as it morphs (it can't see very far then) and fast expand orbital command w/ two bunkers for defense. Then go big macro marines/marauders/medivacs and a raven or two (whose point defense drone is amazing against hydras and stops any burrow tricks) while keeping zerg contained as much as possible.

Regarding carriers, I don't see too many options for Terran other than an equivalent number or more of Thors. Vikings just don't cut it against the interceptor damage-they have their use in TvP (dramatic colossus sniping before a big MnM push, preventing Phoenixes from lifting off your tanks), but carrier killing is not it.

 

[Sh1ner]

As someone who is new to the entire starcraft series, what should I be reading?
My RTS background solely consists of:
some mp in RA2 with some mates
some mp in supcom 1 beta with a mate who was horrrible

I am just watching the HD starcraft channel and I just have no idea what the guy is doing unless he's explaining it.

**Oh my CD Key works, the W was infact 2 slightly smudged Vs :lol so I am waiting to get in like alot of you guys.

 

[ZealousD]

As someone who is new to the entire starcraft series, what should I be reading?
My RTS background solely consists of:
some mp in RA2 with some mates
some mp in supcom 1 beta with a mate who was horrrible

I am just watching the HD starcraft channel and I just have no idea what the guy is doing unless he's explaining it.

**Oh my CD Key works, the W was infact 2 slightly smudged Vs :lol so I am waiting to get in like alot of you guys.

Honestly, the best thing to do is to just experience the game for yourself. I'd really recommend that you pick up the original StarCraft. The whole package is only $20 and that includes the expansion and two strategy guides. SC2 will mean a lot more to you once you learn the basics and you start getting into the story.

 

[TheExodu5]

Yeah I guess the Roach power is really needed considering how much Zerg sucks at air. They REALLY need more AA. Corruptors are awful.

 

[Door2Dawn]

Yeah I guess the Roach power is really needed considering how much Zerg sucks at air. They REALLY need more AA. Corruptors are awful.

Just make Hydralisks, they pretty much beat everything.

 

[TheExodu5]

Just make Hydralisks, they pretty much beat everything.

They have such weak mobility though...very hard to use them offensively. Roaches are far better ground units as well, so it's hard to justify Hydras for anything but AA. I guess the key here is to mix & match Roaches and Hydras to make use of the Hydralisk range.

 

[Ice Monkey]

They have such weak mobility though...very hard to use them offensively. Roaches are far better ground units as well, so it's hard to justify Hydras for anything but AA. I guess the key here is to mix & match Roaches and Hydras to make use of the Hydralisk range.

hydras are great but they'll die under ground pressure. I agree, you have to mix roaches and hydras for a pretty good force.

I mean just massing marines probably rapes hydras just becxause marines dont need gas, which I always run out of. I could just throw away 2000 minerals of marines and still be exactly where I was before.

 

[TheExodu5]

M&M is so damned hard to fight off as Zerg since there's no good option to taking out the Medivacs without first getting pummeled by the Marines. Only real threat to M&M is Banelings. Would be nice if Zerg still had Scourge.

 

[SuperAwesome]

seems like ai maps are available now...

 

[Telosfortelos]

M&M is so damned hard to fight off as Zerg since there's no good option to taking out the Medivacs without first getting pummeled by the Marines. Only real threat to M&M is Banelings. Would be nice if Zerg still had Scourge.

I'm primarily a terran player right now, but I think my favorite matchup to play is ZvT where I'm Z. Banelings, hydras, and mutas all do really well in this matchup (and I love banelings), with cracklings as filler, of course.

 

[DarkoMaledictus]

So how is sc2 beta shaping up guys? All it was said to be? Just got wind my best rts got thrown in the shitter (supreme commander 2) so guess its starcarft all the way now!

 

[JonAmikar]

This thread is lacking in epic full HD screenshots.

 

[autobzooty]

How do mutalisks fare for Zerg AA?

 

[TheExodu5]

How do mutalisks fare for Zerg AA?

Not very well against decently armored units.

 

[autobzooty]

Yeah, I think if Scourge made it back into the game it would help a lot. Plus I remember a lot of epic scourge moments in pro games. scourge vs. science vessels becomes scourge vs. medivac!

 

[Sh1ner]

So how is sc2 beta shaping up guys? All it was said to be? Just got wind my best rts got thrown in the shitter (supreme commander 2) so guess its starcarft all the way now!

Yea I was looking forward to buying that game too, I managed to convince 1 friend as well once I found out it was out in a week.... then I read how the first one is so damn superior :O

now its starcraft 2 + beta if I can get in. Anyone know when/ how often the wave of invites hit the net?

 

[SuperAwesome]

This thread is lacking in epic full HD screenshots.

http://i49.tinypic.com/2safssx.jpg

2048x1152 goodness, no AA though. everything on high.

 

[mbmonk]

Yeah, I think if Scourge made it back into the game it would help a lot. Plus I remember a lot of epic scourge moments in pro games. scourge vs. science vessels becomes scourge vs. medivac!

I doubt scourge make it back. I imagine they were left out for a reason. Blizzard has said everything is on the table, adding units and removing them. So I could be wrong.

Blizzard does have some content pack coming late in the beta cycle, but I can't think of the logic that would hold units out of the early phase of the beta and then stick them in late where there would be less time to balance test. Maybe there is I just can't think of it.

Regardless it's a 3 month beta and that means no starcraft for the masses for awhile. Enjoying the beta if you are in it and improve the game for us that don't get to play until release day.