Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by TulliusCicero 2311 days ago
In Starcraft, the one that gets hammered on the most for lower-level/newer players is "constantly make workers and spend all your money". The most basic rule of thumb is to not stop making workers until you hit 70 or so.

If you do that in silver league, you're going to stomp 99% of your opponents even if your scouting and strategizing and unit compositions are all awful. You could do nothing but make a single unit type and still win.

Of course, if you do this at least somewhat well you'll rapidly "level up" in the ranking system to the point where you'll need to actually start scouting and reacting.
1 comments
hnick 2311 days ago
And it's actually really hard (from personal experience) to keep this up and have your money all spent and controlling your units all at the same time. So simply practicing this one simple rule makes you better at many aspects of the game because you're forced to scramble and keep up.

I actually had games where I was too focused on this where I hadn't made a single aggressive move, the opponent pushed and saw my massive army and just quit.

link
bena 2310 days ago
Yeah, I was never amazing, but I played a decent amount of Brood War back in the day. So I had build orders, I knew of the importance of making workers and staying broke and expanding early.

We had my ex-wife's brother living with us for a while and he wanted to play StarCraft. I was like, "Sure, we can play 2v2 against the computer until you're comfortable". He was like "Nah, I've played Age of Empires, I know how RTS works, let's play 1v1." I tried to tell him, "StarCraft is fast". He insisted. So we played.

I built workers, sent a scout across the map, found his base. He was hoarding mineral until he could afford a barracks. I was pumping out workers. I built a secondary base in his expansion area, a barracks and a factory and staged a bunch of siege tanks along his opening, then drop-shipped several marines, firebats, and medics behind his mineral line.

He had just started building his second barracks. He sent his troops to try and handle the situation, then I pushed my siege tanks in from the other side and ruined his barracks.

link