Important Information about Starcraft/BroodWar

 
 

   I've been playing Brood War for a very long time now and decided to share some of my expertise with some of you amateur players. Personally I'm sick of being allied with incompetent players, and having 1 on 1s with people using it to "practice." Worse yet, is playing with someone in a team melee that has their own (wrong) notions on what it takes to win a game. All those strategy guides you have read, forget them. This is all you need to know. So here is all the information that 80% of Brood War players neglect and are ignorant of:
 

Attacks

This one I love. Blizzard GIVES you the information about each units attacks and what they mean and still no one knows the difference between an explosive and concussive attack. Hydralisks, Dragoons, Tanks (both in siege mode and tank mode), Goliaths (air attack only), Wraiths (air only), Scouts (air only), and Arbiters. These are the attacks that are explosive. What does this mean? That attacking a small unit with any of these attacks, you will only be hitting for 50% (yes half) of what the normal attack of that unit is. Against a medium unit, only 75%. So do the math: Hydra attacking zerglings hits for 5 hps. Yes that's right, both zergling and hydra have equally powerful attacks when attacking eachother. Let's look at this in another way: A sieged tank hits for 70. However this attack is explosive, hence against a small unit (ie a zergling) it will only hit for 35 hit points. But wait, a zergling only has 35 hit points! That's why one sieged tank can pick off little zerglings. Upgrade their armor just once and voila! It suddenly takes 2 sieged tank blasts to vapourize your zerglings. More on armor and upgrades below. Why is it that no one ever uses ghosts and vultures to attack? Because they don't know how to. Ghosts, Vultures, and Firebats have concussive attacks. So against big units, they only take off 25%. Firebats attacking a Dragoon (a large unit) hits only for 4. Against medium units, they hit only for 50% of their original attack. Therefore, try to use vultures, ghosts, and firebats only on small units (zerglings, zealots, dark & high templars, mutalisks, scourge, marines, firebats, medics- see the Brood War help file for more info on unit sizes). HINT: You've probably heard this but try it. Send speedy vultures straight into a base and pick off workers early in the game. It's worth it, remember vultures cost only 75 minerals. Having trouble remembering what units have what attacks? Remember this: Most flying missiles are explosive, machine gun, laser, and melee attacks are all normal.
 

Hit Points

On the same topic of explosive versus concussive versus normal attacks, let's talk about hit points as opposed to shield points. Explosive and Concussive attack penalties apply only to hit points and not shield points. So attacking a Zealot with a Dragoon will be attacking for 20 until the Zealot has no more shields. After that, so long as he's attacking the hit points, each hit takes off only 10. Question: Who do you think would win between 12 Dragoons and 12 Zealots? Try the Zealots (as long as you don't incompetently try to puppet the entire the attack-which brings us too our next topic).
 

Controlling an Attack

Here's a simple strategy guide: DON'T. I here people say "select all your units and tell them to attack one target at a time." How stupid are you? Would it make sense to select 12 battlecruisers to kill one Goliath? Meanwhile you have a fleet of marines blazing at you while you just spent 300 hit points worth of firepower (12 x 25) on one unit. The secret is to select just the right amount of units needed to kill one unit at a time. Since this is nearly impossible (unless you have split-second math skills and sniper-accurate mouse control) your best bet is to let the computer handle the battles. Tell all your units to attack at a certain location close to the enemy units (but becareful of medics since they will wander there if no one needs healing). The advantage with Carriers is because they carry a lot of small attacks, as soon as one unit is dead they can quickly move to the next, but still you don't want every Interceptor rushing one marine.
 

Moving Units

Never use the Move command (unless you're deliberately trying to walk past an attack). This means do not use right click to send your units somewhere on the map. I love when people do this and I cut them off. They're army tries to walk around my herd of Hydras but never make it. Then the player is wondering what happened to his army.
 

Buildings

Please, please do not get hung up on this one-of-each-building thing that newbies are notorious for. Just because Blizzard included the queue for most buildings doesn't mean you only need one gateway. Build lots. I always make sure I'm spending the amount I'm earning. If you notice your resources getting high build another hatchery or something and start pumping more units.
 

Resources

Again another newbie flaw. Do not put just 1 worker pure mineral patch! Especially for Big Game Hunter matches. If its a normal map (around 8 mineral patches) I make around 11 workers to mine minerals. For Vespene Gas, if its close to you I rarely see a difference between 3 and 4 workers. Just make sure there's always someone waiting outside of the geyser. Some say resources win the game but that's not true. Resources can only win for you when you use them. Do not be cheap. Do not be afraid to spend. If you notice your resources go into the thousands, either a) build as many units as you can till you're bankrupt, b) expand (only if you promise yourself to get over your stinginess) or c) build more buildings (advanced or unit producing). If you notice an imbalance (eg 1500 vespene and 300 minerals) change your spending habits (pump high templars or something like that) or shift your focus to minerals (move some workers onto the mineral fields).
 

Creating Units

Number all (or most) of your unit producing buildings. Especially zerg, number all hatcheries (click on the hatchery and press Ctrl+#). Then every little while press the number, then press S to select larvae and then choose the letter of the unit you want to create. Since Hatcheries don't have a queue you should do this very often. Just remember to keep pressing #,S,H to build mass Hydras (the best overall unit in the game). I'm feeling really stupid for saying this because this is so damn obvious. I swear, if you don't do this, you will lose no matter what.
 

Armor Upgrades

Before we get to upgrades, let's talk about armor itself. Move the cursor over a units armor and it should have a "Armor: 0" that shows up. Units like the Battlecruiser will say "Armor: 3." Unfortunately few know what this means. An armor of 3 means that every attack on that unit will be reduced by 3. A marine (which hits with a damage of 6) will be hitting only for 3 (6-3=3). For every upgrade to the armor, you add 1 to your the unit's starting armor. So if you fully upgraded ship armor, your Battlecruiser will have a total armor of 6. A marine shooting at your Battlecruiser will have to shoot it twice just to do 1 hit point's worth of damage! So if you got Battlecruisers and your opponent is trying to hold them with a million-marine-march, do not upgrade weapons, upgrade only the armor. No matter how much you upgrade the weapons, the max for a Battlecruiser is 34, which means you still need two shots to kill one marine. This is much more important with Carriers. They have 150 shield points, and 300 hit points. The shield initially have 0 armor while the hit points have an armor of 4. So when your Carriers run out of shields, do not run from the battle for your shield battery. Shields are only the tip of the iceberg, Corsairs will only damage you for 1 (5-4) and same with Valkyries. Armor works against any damage. Even Psi Storm which hits for 125 hit points and Yamato Gun. If you have an armor of 3, you will only get hit for 122 by Storm and 247 by Yamato. Harldy a difference. That's why use armor only if you're facing a lot of small attacks
 

Attack Upgrades

Attack upgrades are added to a units inital damage. A Dragoon hits for 20. Upgrade once and it will say "20+2" for a total of 22. Remember that it is this final number that suffers the deduction of explosive/concussive attacks. If this Dragoon attacks a zergling, the damage will only be 11. As you can see, upgrades are sometimes useless (in the case above it will still take 4 shots to kill that zergling). You have to know when to use them. If you are going to use a lot of small units, upgrade weapons because as a whole they will cause a lot more damage. If you are going for big and powerful units, you will be outnumbered always (unless someone really thinks they could kill 12 Battlcruisers with 6 Valkyries) and so upgrade your armor so that you will last longer and so that all those small attacks will be considerably less harmful. 

Spells

I am not going to explain every spell, only a few quirks to some of the interesting ones.
 

Darkswarm

All long ranged attacks are useless to units (on the ground) under the dark swarm. The following still work under dark swarm: melee attacks, Lurker attacks (keep this in mind), scarabs (from Reavers), psi storm, plague, yamato gun, and nukes (if I ever see that again I'll flip my machine off). Sieged tanks also still work but the damage is severely reduced.
 

Nukes

Everyone is afraid of Nukes but they don't even know how much damage they do. It's simple: 500 hp of damage to all units (this will kill everything except Battlecruisers who will be spared because of their armor of 3). For buildings it's different. A Nuke on a building will damage for 500, or 2/3's of its total hit points (including shields), whichever is higher or whichever destroys the building. What does this mean? That two simultaneous Nukes will destroy ANYTHING they hit
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Heal

About heal I just want to say that yes healing does work for your allies. Medics can heal the following units: Zealots, Dark and High Templars, Zerglings, Hydralisks, Ultralisks, Defilers, Marines, Medics, Firebats, SCVs and Ghosts
 

Psi Storm

Will hit for a maximum of 125 hit points on any unit including Larvae.
 

Irradiate

Can be cast on ANY unit. However it will only do damage to the biological ones. The only biological unit that can survive Irradiation is the Devourer (which will have less than 10 hit points left). It's max damage is 250 (Devourer's survive because of their armor of 2 and their self healing ability).
 

 

Your Base

Always start building things close together. If you're zerg, build that first sunken colony so that it can protect all your workers, your hatchery, and your spawning pool. This will help defend agains rushes. On hunter and similar maps, it is very tempting to focus all your defense on the one entrance to your base. This does work well but do not make it the sole concentration of your defense. The most important part of your base is your resources and workers. Defend this and you'll be okay. Ask yourself this question: Where do ALL drops/recalls happen? Answer: Right where your workers are mining. Everyone knows this is a weakness, if you're relying a lot on defense while you climb the tech tree, don't forget to defend this point.
 

Rushing

Do not ever do the famous 4-6 zergling rush with the following exceptions: 1) The game is lagging too much. 2) After watching how your opponent plays using your overlord you realize you are playing a newbie that you don't want to waste your time on. Or 3) You see that your opponent is going for a rush himself (though there are better ways to cope with this). Rushing is unskillful and just ruins games. Chicken shits use it to turn a 3 on 3 to a 3 on 2 because without the odds in their favour they'll get killed. If this happens to you, do not help your ally, he is dead if they rushed him good. Go straight after the rusher since they never have any defense and all their zerglings are busy rushing. If they find you quick, make sure you find them too. Rushing always leaves that player weak so take advantage of this.
 

Carrier Attacks

Everyone thinks the game is practically over once someone has 12 Carriers. But this is far from true. Remember that Carriers are a big investment, if you can kill them, the game is yours. So next time you're caught unprepared for 12 carriers do one of the following: a) Darkswarm. This is all you need. I recommend getting Consume so that you won't run out of energy points. Just cast it over all your Hydras and hold them back. If he has any brains, he'd use Disruption Web on your hydras. And so go for b) Devourers. Devourers are useless themselves. Get your allie to make either Valkyries or Corsairs. Then attack with both Devourers and Valks/Corsairs and trust me their dead. Get at least 4 Devourers. After that all you need is about 13 Corsairs or 7 Valkyries, provided that they keep all their Carriers together. They'll drop like flies since the acid spores of the Devourers nullify the armor and add to each attack of the Corsairs and Valkyries. Of course if you have enough time (like if he's attacking your partners base) bring out the scourge and kill them off one at a time. It takes only 5 Scourge to kill a carrier but I'd bring a sixth just in case. I better explain Acid Spores for you dummies.
 

Devourers

The Acid Spores of Devourers are lethal, especially against the tougher units like Carriers and Battlecruisers. Lemme explain: If you attack a unit with no armor using a Mutalisk, you will do 9 damage. Hit that same unit with one Acid Spore and the Mutalisk will be doing 10 damage on it. If that unit has "Acid Spores (9)" then ever attack from those mutalisks will be doing 18 damage! That's how Acid Spores work. This is most lethal with Valkyries and Corsairs since they use quick and small attacks. Each neutron flare from a Corsair can do 14 damage. Valkyries are much more powerful. Its 6 rockets will do a total of 30 damage. If a unit had 9 Acid Spore then those same six halo rockets would do 84 damage! This is why Devourers are crucial in helping to destroy Battlecruisers and Carriers.