Day 2 - Bit of an Update

I didn't get to play yesterday, but did manage to get some playtime in tonight. On day one I started the single player on the normal difficulty. Currently, I'm working on the 'New Haven' mission. Up to this point I've managed to beat every mission on the first try, however I aborted the 'New Haven' mission because I knew I was going to be able to beat it, and I have a few ideas as to why.

First of all, I realize now that I had the wrong idea about how refineries worked. I assumed I could continually set SUVs to gather at a refinery, and the gather rate would increase with each new SUV. However, I was constantly in need of more vespene gas, mostly due to the fact that the majority of SUVs I had set to gather were just standing outside the refinery, as two unmolested gas geysers waited to be refined.

Another problem I have is in my combat unit production. As new units are introduced in the campaign, I generally try and include them in any army I build. However, I have no concept of the balance I should be looking for. Medics seem important, so I try and have a couple of them in each group. Marines seem akin to pawns, so I try and compose 25%-33% of a group with them. However past that, with firebats, marauders, goliaths, vikings, etc., I just throw in a bunch for good measure. This ended up biting me in the ass, because (I believe) goliaths cannot attack air units. On the 'New Haven' mission the player is mostly tasked with destroying air units, so a large amount of the units in my groups couldn't actually attack the enemy. I really am trying to focus on my macro, with constant SVU production, steady food and combat unit production and keeping my money down, so the micro is suffering. I'm just trying to build a large group that I can send in, spam 'A' and achieve what I need.

So, I think that accurately describes the state of my SC2 play. I macro well enough to keep things moving, I build large arbitrary groups of combat units and I pass missions. I'm pretty inefficient, though I would say I use the keyboard more than most new players would (this is a totally random guess but I like to believe it). Most importantly, I'm having fun! The campaign is great and has gotten me pretty sucked in, and I feel the small amount of RTS ability I have is coming out and making itself useful.

We'll see where it goes from here!

Day 1 - A Quick Intro Before Bed

Long story short, I've decided to start playing Starcraft II (at this point) somewhat seriously. I don't have a lot of time, as I'm pretty sick and need to get to bed, but I'll try and sum up the gist of all this.

Last week a reddit member named le_temps made a post in regards to reddit deciding on something for him to devote two hours everyday of the next year to. The hive mind chose Starcraft II, and le_temps agreed, jumping in right away by having /r/buildapc put together a decent rig for him on a budget. With this post in /r/starcraft, he was on his way to a Starcraft II lifestyle.

I find all this very, very interesting. Given my dabbling with e-sports in the form of various Halo versions in the past, I've kept the SC2 scene on my radar since its release. Given the original's popularity as possibly the largest competitively played game on the planet, SC2 was poised to become the next step in professional gaming. With that, various posters on /r/starcraft have plans for le_temp to get caught up rather quickly, and with his desire to study the game to its core, become quite competitive.

Basically, I decided I want to do the same thing. le_temps has created a blog as well, aptly title RedditPickedMyHobby, and will be tracking his progress (I assume) daily once he is all setup. To add some credibility to my plans, I contacted le_temps and informed him of my decision, my plan to be better in said year, and added a contribution of a month of reddit gold as a token of credibility and good sportsmanship between future combatants. He seemed to like the idea of a weekly spar of some sort to judge our progress, and appreciated my gift. I hope this to be the beginning of one of many fantastic Starcraft friendships.

That about covers the basic progress thus far. I'll get a little more into my reasons tomorrow, as well as where my playing ability is after my first day of the single player campaign. I look forward to Starcraft II becoming a part of my life, and hope anyone reading will come to understand my decision.