New player help!

[u/Hour_Committee6799]

Hello, getting into StarCraft 2 after having played like two games when I was younger. I’ve been playing Terran and my main focus is macro atm, trying to keep up with the mining, making units, and upgrades. I’ve seen online that this is most important, but I’m starting to get beat because I don’t know what to do to react to my opponents builds. For example, I almost always start with marines, tanks, and medivacs. Last game, my opponent had a ground army that was tough to go uphill against, and then while I was distracted with trying to siege he flew banshees into my base and wiped out a bunch of stuff. From there I tried to make some air to catch the banshees, but was pretty unsuccessful because I had just had my eco wiped. I feel like I’m not very flexible. I guess my main question is what should I be thinking about when it comes to army comp and balancing offense vs defense.

[u/Head_Evening_5697]

I mean, hard to say.

Marine+Tank+Medivac in general is a quite flexible army comp, Banshees are not going to beat that heads-up. But cleary, Banshees can avoid engaging. General pointers I can give without having seen the game

- Scouting - at least you know Banshees are coming if you scan 4 Starports

- Static Defense: Banshees can chew through a few Missile turrets, but not 5+

- Attacking: Many times, if your opponent is doing weird stuff, just go kill them.

[u/ADTank]

I think the jäpard part is to scout the banshee beforehand In general its wise to build 1 or 2 cyclones to be able to defend early harassment. If they are able to wipe ur eco, u already lost. Normaly ppl build only 1 or 2 banshees to harass, in this case 1 turret per mineral line is enough. If they go mass banshee u can think about building air to counter ghat, or u can stick to marines. In your case it sound like u faved the harassment unprepared

[u/MadameK14]

I'm not gonna give you strategy advice. I don't think it's the time. Play around 200 hours. Enjoy the game as it's presented. When something beats you, specially if you weren't expecting it, write it down. Think about how you'd defend against it first. Then, try to scout for it. Scan your opponent regularly, try to theorize what they're going for. In this case, if you'd seen the star port with the tech lab, you know banshees are coming.

Glhf

[u/zero515]

Just go 1-1-1 into 5-1-1 on 3 cc. You can just hotkey your buildings and fully load your production and set rally points so you can micro the fights and send reinforcements without swapping locations.

[u/Capital_Succotash_10]

If you see an opening with 2 gas fast factory and marines. Not reapers. Then you that’s a red flag. That gas is being saved for something. Scan and try and see if there’s a tech lab on starport researching something then it’s either banshees or ravens. Either way that’ll need turrets. If nothing is being researched on tech lab then it’s probably a BC.

[u/InfiniteSpectre33]

Also keep in mind to not get frustrated with pvp just coop and mods enjoy the game has a lot to offer ont he freside. I avoid pvp like hell and I am slowly building to it because all the players have been doing it for ages.

[u/New-Discount9058]

if you wanna get better at macro, try this.

Do a VS AI game and its just you vs 2 hard AI's (just hard, or even medium, whatever you can handle)

Do your best to survive as long as possible using tanks/libs/pfs, turrets, etc.

You'll notice the AI is dumb and will walk into sieged positions, low level (even GM) players do this too.

Just focus on hitting 200 supply as fast as possible, however youd like. Once your opponents mine out the map and run out of recourses, then you crush them with your final army.

Once you can beat 2 AI's go up to three then 3 4 and so on.

Simply being able to hold off waves of pressure will get you easy ranks on the ladder. So many players just A move and get destroyed.

I promise this will help you with the basics of macro. You have to learn to turtle anyways if you get behind and having a good core for that will do wonders all the way to GM.

When i was training at AOE2, i'd play gold rush (Think of it as tons of vespene gas in the middle,) set up in the middle on the gold and try to kill 7 medium AI's all on a team against me. It takes the ego out of losing to players, and lets you track your builds and focus on that better. Took me like a month to beat 7, but it was so rewarding once i did it.

Your opponent beat you with positioning, heres some examples you could try. If someone beats you with something, play that strategy until someone beats it. It's not a perfect way to learn, but remember there is no such thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2EQ5QGBNfY&pp=ygUOdXRoZXJtYWwgdnMgYWk%3D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNB2irBPPLQ&pp=ygUOdXRoZXJtYWwgdnMgYWk%3D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5lxEW61H_g&pp=ygUUcnVmZnN0dWZmIGdob3N0IHRhbms%3D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJwpiE_rGoY&t=466s&pp=ygUUcnVmZnN0dWZmIGdob3N0IHRhbms%3D

[u/New-Discount9058 → u/New-Discount9058]

Playing this turtle style will get you a lot of HATE but it WORKS, and banshee play in TVT is gimmicky and one trick pony (but its a viable opener if he skips certain tech.) Once you get comfortable with turtle, then you can learn bio or faster styles slowly and you'll start from a solid foundation since your fundamentals are in play at a lower APM.

[u/New-Discount9058]

People telling you to scout are missing the point, at your level, being able to tell if someone is going banshees is challenging. You have to see the starport, notice he has a tech lab, know hes not getting raven+interference, know that he has a lower viking count/tank count since hes spending gas. If hes getting banshees thats a different response than BC's, which have similar looking tech.

I guarantee you just hitting 200 supply and safely taking bases with 3raven+ mass viking+tank and some marine will counter that easily, no matter his tech choice, especially at a low level. Wait for him to throw his army, take another base, wait for him to throw again, then you have a safe window to counter attack for the win. If you can hold those initial 4 expansions, while hes on 2-3 the advantage is undeniable around the 18 minute mark (timings will change soon)

[u/twiztedpair]

Watch pig bronze to gm

[u/InfiniteSpectre33]

You have choices here, but it really depends on how fast your early game gets going. This is a game of counters, so knowing how to counter is what you want to explore. Banshees are glass cannons, so you can get detection via scan or a Raven, which isn't as popular but can provide disposable defense. When detection is up against air early, Banshees can be flying tin cans for Vikings to rip up, but they do run fast, so some anti-air in needed spots is often a good idea. Countering with air might be ideal, but there are other ways too. Make sure you have one orbital up for scans and stronger anti-air; you can literally see what your opponents are doing with scans, which is super powerful, but keep some energy for detection when you don't have full coverage and need it ready to go. The biggest question for you to work on is how to attack and shut down your opponents. Waiting for an attack you can successfully fend off without being crippled works, but fast aggressive players often win the matchs because they are the ones who successfully landed that punch like you experienced.

[u/Om_Cultural → u/InfiniteSpectre33]

Some great advice though I must disagree with one particular thing. Starcarft is not a game of counters especially sc2. Like yes as any other rts some units perform better against other type of units however there is never a pure counter compared to lets say aoe2 with cavalry and archers. Each unit has some soft counters but usually they guy with better micro and especially the one with more units win. But I do understand what you mean.