Campaign Creations

tipereth wrote: I've been getting geysers going really really early, like, before my spawning pool is half done, and the second geyser up not long after. Gas flow feels sooooo slow.

Gas feels even slower now with minerals coming in even faster than before.

Not getting that tiny bit from depleted geysers isn't helping either.

I uploaded my 1920x1200 overview of the file structure/mpqs on youtube already.

Currently uploading a game of an FFA between Me, Lav, Tipereth, and Rylin - a sc.org admin.

These will be made available in the form of a direct download later today.

Congratulations on getting the beta Isk, I do feel sorry for you that you don't enjoy much of the stuff on Battle.net and the intensity and such of battles, but to be honest, I don't think anyone does. StarCraft was a masterpiece at keeping the right intensity and speed of battles and such, but this is just sad...

There's a lot more "housekeeping" to do. What I mean is, Nexus' Chrono, Orbital Command's 2 abilities, Queen's 2 abilities. Things to do periodically that if you forget, you lose an advantage.

I may not like battle.net 2.0 that much but I'm really starting to like this engine.

HKS and I just put the pathing engine through its paces with the Zerg. Some 400-600 zerglings at a time bouncing around each other and moving in tight formation, ultralisks moving through, ect. I recorded it all, about 1 hour 30 minutes of hilarity.

The FPS drop from so many units was minimal, too. Only the cpu usage spiked (Starcraft 2 is not multithreaded for the most part, very bad blizzard!) and remember this is with the i7 performance issue Blizzard posted about, too. WHILE FRAPSING.

The engine's pathing and mass units performed very well. To up the stakes I made over 200-300 overlords.

Then I nuked EVERYTHING.

No fps hit unless I zoomed right into the stack of overlords bunched into a tight little sack. And even then it was minimal - with fraps going.

Oh, and I successfully built a command center by mind controlling SCV's with Infestors. I got about 20-30 health per scv on the command center.

Yeah, this video will be awesome.

Mesk FFA Game 00 - Lavarinth, Tipereth, Rylin, IskatuMesk

SC2 Beta - Mesk Coverage - FFA 00 (Tipereth, Lavarinth, Rylin, Myself) 1/6
SC2 Beta - Mesk Coverage - FFA 00 (Tipereth, Lavarinth, Rylin, Myself) 2/6
SC2 Beta - Mesk Coverage - FFA 00 (Tipereth, Lavarinth, Rylin, Myself) 3/6
SC2 Beta - Mesk Coverage - FFA 00 (Tipereth, Lavarinth, Rylin, Myself) 4/6
SC2 Beta - Mesk Coverage - FFA 00 (Tipereth, Lavarinth, Rylin, Myself) 5/6
SC2 Beta - Mesk Coverage - FFA 00 (Tipereth, Lavarinth, Rylin, Myself) 6/6

Medivac + Thor? GG.

When Lavarinth destroyed your main I was like "how the fuck does this game last for another half hour"

FUCK I want beta

Point laser defense is pure hilarity... I can already see some of the ridiculous UMS maps that are gonna spring up from that.

Mucky wrote: When Lavarinth destroyed your main I was like "how the fuck does this game last for another half hour"

FUCK I want beta

Yeah I was expecting to die but then I realized I could still get starports and I thought OH WAIT I CAN DRAG THIS OUT BECAUSE I'M RICH

But I'm getting better at spending my money

Anyways, after playing a ton of 2v2's with BZ and his buddies here's some more thoughts;

I really didn't like the macro mechanics at first but the more I use them the more I'm getting used to them. Their cooldowns are so short that you often feel implied to use them but I usually save them for appropriate times, ie chrono trigger for 2gate early zealots, that is RAPE against zerg (doubly so when I throw some proxy cannons into the mix) especially if they FE. MULE's aren't really anything exciting or intuitive at all, point and click and get money. Spawn larva is pretty much point and click then spam units. You can stack up to 19 larva on a single hatchery for extra lulz.

As far as races are concerned, Zerg are definitely my weakest, followed by terran, and then protoss. Protoss plays very naturally for me. Terran, I'm a metal player by tradition from sc1. This works reasonably well in sc2 but without valkyries or goliaths things are pretty difficult to handle. Battlecruisers and vikings both blow against mass light air, and thors can only single-target. So my counter to them getting air is to not let them get air.

Hellions... are not comparable to vultures. You have to wait a moment before they can start firing when they stop. It's not an animation, it's just how they are (some cooldown or something). You can't hit and run like you can a vulture. They're still fast, so you can still kite, but it's not nearly as effective or responsive as sc1.

Hydras are insane. They're like, the single best unit in the game right now. Pound for pound hydras kill everything besides roaches. You need Colossi to easily kill them as toss, and terran, you need tanks. A lot of tanks. Maybe marauders. Everything else just dies as soon as they come in range, they attack so fast and do insane damage.

Nukes are REALLY easy to get. I mean really easy. But ghosts are more expensive than nukes by two fold, and cloaking takes a while to research.

Zerg who don't get tier 2 very quickly and rely on roaches get totally buttfucked by early stargate. Which is like, everyone I've played 90% of the time.

Played a bit with Stalkers. They're okay. A little squishy, but good for sniping. Can work vs roaches with some micro. Blink is manual, not automatic.

immortals are even more insane than I first thought.

Motherships melt to hydras in seconds. Carriers melt to hydras in seconds if there isn't enough carriers. BC's... don't even try it. Lings die in seconds. Marines die in seconds. A planetary fortress with 20 scvs on it dies eventually.

Terrans don't have an easy way to stop drops. Without valkyries, a mid-late game doom drop (a stack of like 30 overlords) is impossible to prevent. BC's do single target damage and not fast enough, vikings don't do enough damage, and turrets never did work. Without valkyries you're in big trouble. Honestly the only thing I can think that would work is bunkers full of marines. But you can't make 8 bunkers of marines that fast, can you? Nope! But this was in a 2v1 situation and I while could have taken either guy 1v1 I was kinda gonna die anyway since they were just containing me and I had spent all of my resources trying to save my ally.

Nuke dots are VERY easy to spot. Impossible to miss. See a dot? Scan and let your tanks kill him or run away.

Great first set of videos, Mesk.  You did a cool recovery from Lavarinth's onslaught.

I want moar!  Moar videos!  Do Protoss or Zerg next.  I want to see their upper end-game tiers in action.  The video streams I viewed last night were boring.  Basically they were players trying to rank up by zealot rushing every game.  Boring.

I have a bunch of 2v2 games I played with BZ and some of his buddies. We were all around the same skill level so they were pretty good games and exchanged wins and losses with different team setups. All races were played. Most of the games didn't go into the late-game phase because 2v2 runs pretty quickly but still nice games.

Currently starting encoding and then uploading. Gonna pull and all nighter to get these out and clear my X drive.

Fame! The games were pretty fun, and you will see a wide range of maps, strategies, team compositions and units, if Isk posts all of them, which would be insane.

I'm posting all of them. Even the cheesy, short ones.

Speaking of which, RCX was quite right when he said the good ol' zealot rush is effective. Two-gate zealots, saving chrono trigger for your first two zealots, is insanely powerful on a small map.

Did psi storm get nerfed or something? I've played several ZvP matches and seen not a single high templar, which would totally wreck my lings/heavy air.