Star
Craft
One of the most played games of this century (I'm kidding, but its close), Starcraft revolutionized the previous formula used in Warcraft II, adding three different(yet equalized) races and by simplizing the hp system (a big improvement coming from a Warcraft and C&C vet!!). Although I will not compile charts (you don't need 'em as the game tells you the stats) but I will give helpful insites to the races.
General Strategies
Scvs/drones/probes: your weakest but most important force. Remember that there are people on Battle.net who have perfected resource management to a science so time is of the essence! First off, assign all four of your workers to DIFFERENT crystals! This may seem stupid but it increases production. Next build workers until you have 7. Have the seventh build a barracks/spool/pylon and assign it if its not busy (protoss only really...). (if protoss, have 8th build a gateway after pylon is finished, if terran have 8th build a supply depot) continue building workers until you have two to each crystal (use common sense and don't use workers on unreachable crystals.). Next build three workers and build a vespene gas thingie (three work well, but put as many as you can so that they aren't waiting to enter everytime). As soon as you can defend two places at once (or mutalisks/tanks/dragoons) build a second base and repeat process. do this for all available plots of resources!!
basic units:
"I didn't use marines and i got clobbered!" or "zerglings suck! i never use em! my record is 0to 30 by the way." Basic units are important as both enemy annoyance and as basic defense. Defense... that word is miss leading. There is no defense in Starcraft, and you should build that way. Look at the zerg, their best defense is the sunken colony, and that is way too slow to be effective. Your best defense is your best offence. 6 zerglings can kill a lazy terran/protoss player in a few seconds. This is why speed and lesser units are required. When you think about it, marines take up 1/8 of a supply depot, can attack air and land from far away, take up little space, can be transported easily, and when upgraded beat out both the hydralisk and goliath. Many battles are won with terrans/goliaths/dragoons/mutalisks. The upper level things are nice but cost too much and you may be faced with the same for opposition. Killing your foe in the begginning is way better than later.
Terran Strategies
Ah the people stuck in the middle of it all! "The weak technologically impaired" humans seem to hold their own against the other races with ground forces with their siege tanks and marines; however, they severly lack with their air power and need a definate MECHANICAl powerhouse. Generally with the Terrans, you should take a role of "the size of your army matters" especially with
marines. In one game I almost made more marines than the comp zerg had of all of their minions. Marines are very versetile when you think about it. They take up one space, cost 50 credits, and are more space efficient than the 4 space, 150credit??Vespene Goliath. A second note, marines can fit 8 in one dropship! you only need three-four dropships to make a difference on an island base. A good tactic is to make five-six barracks and send out marines. Enough about marines.... and more about the other forces.
vultures the truely bashed vehicle of the terrans can actually hold its own in a fight, and its mines are invaluable. a great late game tactic against ground forces is to position siege tanks near a base, fire and run. Before the siege tank attack, you should make two horizontal rows of mines and drive the tanks through em with the enemy following ('member they home)[Do Not make a solid block of mines as the siege tanks cannot drive over them]. Another hint is to mine future sites for your bases, you can see if your foe is attempting colonization, and you can stymie his attempts at defence before taking the base. For 75 credits, you get a great hit and run fighter and 3 mines.
Siege Tanks make great attackers in some instances. Do not employ them all of the time as they are expensive and are not mobile in their siege mode. Do employ them in strategic base assaults on enemies on the top of overlooking hills (that'll really kill em since they wont be able to stop you until later in the game). Again Siege tanks are important, but you need more versitile fighters to aid them.
Goliaths are a waste of time and money. Period. Taking up four spaces and causing 1/2 the damage of 4 marines, well you do the math. These guys are a rich man's luxury to only be used in extreme protoss assualts (as the Goliath causes more s-a damage).
Firebats are slightly more useful. Use them against zerg and put one in each of your bunkers to nuke early protoss zealots (they work well 'gainst the zealots!). Firebats are not costly, and cause 16hp damage each, making zerg assualts easy.
Ghosts make up the late game strategy along with nostralgic 50's paranoia. Along with cloaking and nuking, a ghost can stop machines dead in their tracks, and still destroy them! The problem is: you can actually see where they will nuke. A telltale little red dot marks the spot, so it is really important to have detector units ready to deal with any enemy ghosts.
Wraiths should be used as often as goliaths: not much! besides being a waste of credits, they can be an anoyance especially in the early game. A good strategy is to build wraiths as fast as you can and rush with their cloaking, but you have to be REALLY fast. Wraiths should be used to slow down ('cause they can't really stop) a guardian rush.
Battlecruisers if these badboys didn't cost so much, i would advise you to buy in stock. 2-4 of them are nice to have during late game raids as their yamato cannons can take out air defenses (two b. cruisers to a antiair target). Unfortunatly they cost way too much and are slower to produce than the protoss carriers. They make a decent distraction to any offense, but they should be your last concerns for your terran army.
Science Vessels are the detector aircraft to buy! They can protect themselves in pairs (defensive matrix cast on each other) and they can offer some annoyance to the enemy (irradiation). If your "friend" is making massive amounts of marines and you have an ambush of siege tanks set up, irradiate him. He has to move his men (or lose most of em, heh!) and he'll definatly come looking for you (resulting in the total wipeout of his investment, and a base ripe for the picking). You should have at least two every time you play (4 or more to try the strategy above).
Shuttles are great for marine drops! Each one can carry eight destructive little guys (i suggest a 4 shuttle drop just to destroy his innards)!!
Terran Civilians are bad choices. Hell! you can't even produce em! But you sure can kill em! Hee hee hee!
Zerg Strategies
"RRRRRGGG!" Thats what you'll say when you first play as the zerg. "They don't have good units!!! Their max attack power is 26!" Thats when I say: "and how many units did you build?" If the answer is "...5" you're in trouble. The answer should be 50, and don't even bother with base defenses (except for one spore tower) as they're all weak. Your units should be both your attack and defense with zerg. Got a siege tank setting down on your front lawn/creep? Send in a couple of:
Zerglings are the weakest but fastest to build units, EVER. Six of them can take on a terran/protoss base before they get one unit out, literally. Speed and quantity is an issue with these guys.
Hydralisks are equivalent to a 3 2 marine, but they have slightly longer range, and are larger than a marine. Great air defense, but you should definatly save up for these guys:
Mutalisks are killers! Hover them over a scv population and watch them drop! Their attack hits multiple enemies at a time, doing enough damage to take out alot of scvs. They are great for killing siege tanks and are the basic zerg attack units. Build enough of these guys, and you are unstoppable, especially for the next reason:
Guardians are made from morphed mutalisks. Their range and attack power Kills! Period. You build twenty of these, supported by a overlord and ten mutalisks, and you will win the game. Not a single species can effectivly stop the Guardians from the ground, but the air is a different story. Guardians cannot attack airborne objects. This is why you built ten mutalisks! To allow the guardians more time to destroy buildings. Being heavily armored, airborne, and the zergs most powerful fighter, guardians are almost unstoppable.
Ultralisks should be your virtual "battering ram" into any base. Run these guys in first, followed by your hydras, zerglings and air forces. They are the most heavily armored units of the game, and can trade hits with a zealot at 16hp damage. They slaughter marines, so build these guys to rush through a bunker zone to destract them for the guardian/muta combo.
Scourges are great scouts, and the only conceivable way to down multiple protoss carriers. Send 4 or 5 to a carrier and watch it burn! Burn baby Burn!! You get two at a time for a cheap price, so you should build these guys from day one.
Queens are an investment against siege tank ambushes and uncloaking wraiths/ghosts. The spawn broodling kills a ground vehicle and spawns two broodlings who attack the other units. Due to the close proximity of the other siege tanks, and the tank(s) that you just killed, you come off as the winner having killed some tank(s) and damaging the others. Ensnare uncloaks all enemies that it is cast on. Great for when several wraiths are knocking your door and cloaking.
Defilers fit right in with a queen combo, or even solo. Their plague spell damages buildings, making them slowly "rot" down to 1hp. This is basically death to terran buildings since they loose hp automatically when they are on fire. Take out siege tanks with your queens and use a defiler to plague his bunkers. Combo this with a weak hydra rush for a "coup d'etat." If you invested in burrow, you can hide all of your troops right by his defenses, but be careful of detectors!
Overlords You may get protective of them, (i mean they are the zerg supply depots!) but you shouldn't be. When upgraded they are good transports and, when used for active patrol, are the best detterants against wraith/ghost/arbiter attacks. Use them offensivly too!
Protoss Strategies
I can remember the first day I looked at the Starcraft manual. "Hmmm... the protoss don't have good fighters, but their defenses look great! I wanna be em!" Much to my dissappointment I had to endure the "pathetic" terrans who, ironically, I would come to like so much. Protoss aren't bad though. Their unit numbers only slightly matter. In other words: you don't need that many to KICK ASS!!
Zealots *sigh* if you can build em fast enough, you can win even faster. This one kid must've build 15 of em in the first few minutes, effectively rushing and killing my 2 bunker terran stronghold. Did he cheat? Probably, I haven't been able to do the same. Ever. These guys are good enough to be the best units in other races, so you should build alot of them, even just for zealot drops or cannon/siege tank fodder.
Dragoons could God make a better unit? ....Well yes but, even he would agree that dragoons are the best unit for any race. They only have two problems: Their size and the inability to shuttle more than two at a time. Other than that, you should treat them as marines (considering they are just like the marines).
Templar are great around the home... base that is. Their psionic storm can't harm buildings, but it really kills units. Air and Ground units alike can be nuked by a psionic storm. Hallucination can be used to sneak into a base, send out the hallucinations first, and then run your guys in! The hallucinations can't damage anything, but they can take damage! Just be sure not to have them attack anything, because this can alert your enemy just as if you were really attacking him.
Scouts They can do 26hp damage with their airborne missiles, AND THEY JUST CALL THEM SCOUTS?!?! These are the guys who can tangle with the guardian/muta rush, and win!! It takes 5 wraiths to equal 3 of these guys (sometimes not even!).
Carriers *phew*! You ever run up against six of these guys against you, run like hell!!!!!!! Costing alot, but totally worth it, these guys dominate. Period. Up to eight, fast, 5hp damaging units can be made by these guys, and you can keep any ones that weren't shot down! Some enemies can't even target these little guys. They are really fast. It helps to have dragoon ground support and scout airsupport, but it dosn't really matter. Helpful hint: it is every carrier owner's nightmare to have his carrier either enter a field of scourges, or get stuck in a ghost's lockdown. Just a hint.
Arbiters are cool. Cloaking all units around itself (except itself), the arbiter makes life easier. A basic attack team is composed of 1 reaver, 2 arbiters, and 6 carriers. Now imagine three attack teams simultaneously strikeing a base from three different spots. Now you're thinking! Stasis isn't worth the credits, but recall is (especially with ready hords of dragoons!)!
Reavers: Gotta have em. Although more powerful than the siegetanks, you wont find reavers as useful. Why? They move slow all the time and their bombs must go around, or run right through objects. Not very good, but still a must have for rushes or just to clear up siege tank formations.
Well thats enough for now, be sure to email me if I missed anything.
