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Specifically, macro describes large scale strategy. It mostly means building new bases setting up harvesting and so on, its all about the long term benefit. micro describes small scale strategy, the little moves you make to help keep your dudes alive just a little longer or do that little bit of extra damage that could make the difference in the fight. Both terms are based off of the prefixes of the same spelling meaning large and small respectively and are often times used to denote scale. Think macroeconomics vs microeconomics.
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Feb 16, 2014 03:28
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The Casualty posted:Actually, macro corresponds to your strategic-level decisions. Managing your economy, building/ moving your groups around when they aren't fighting, and how you respond to the enemy's overall battle strategy. Micro, on the other hand, refers to tactical decisions. How you move individual units or groups, your triggering of abilities, and what you decide to attack when the battle is joined. Micro and macro are difficult to balance because they both require a certain amount of attention, but your good players can do both simultaneously. This is a fairly good summary. The strategic/tactical distinction is good, but a number of things you do with your units isn't necessarily "tactical" so much as it is good control. The biggest problem with using macro/micro is that there is no agreement on what exactly macro is versus what exactly micro is. People on Team Liquid like to say that "macro" is anything involving economy and buildings (i.e., unit production, structure construction, base management and expansion, upgrades) while everything else is micro. Some things are more clear-cut than others: stutter stepping or splitting marines is obviously micro. What about army positioning? Transferring workers from one base to another? The easiest way to think of it is that "macro" is "making more poo poo, and making your poo poo better" while "micro" is "using your poo poo." FoolyCharged posted:Both terms are based off of the prefixes of the same spelling meaning large and small respectively and are often times used to denote scale. Think macroeconomics vs microeconomics. Macro- and micromanagement, specifically. I wouldn't classify it as "macro is focused on the long term" because it is just as vital to be able to efficiently make units when doing potent early aggressive strategies in multiplayer. If you are doing a proxy 2 rax (i.e., you build two barracks near your opponent's base rather than in yours), you are trying to end the game very quickly. If you do not efficiently spend your money when employing this strategy, you may not have enough units to win. Lunethex posted:Micromanagement, or "microing" is just a term used to refer to the management of units. It's an exhaustive topic that can be simply explained as thoughtful decisions for each individual in an army or proper resource usage, etc. One good example is how he will stutter-step as you mentioned, that's just him giving his marines faster attack rate. Very few enemies (or none, IIRC) actually have an uninterrupted stream of damage and it's all done in bursts, so even though you see marines firing non-stop their damage is only being done incrementally. By constantly ordering attacks they get to do more damage overtime, increasing DPS. Ok, so the macro thing he said is wrong, but I want to expound on this a little bit, and make a few corrections. Stutter stepping units is not to increase the amount of damage they do directly. What Raldan is actually doing when he stuttersteps his marines is he is cancelling the attack animation with a move command. Functionally, it allows units to attack and move at the same time, as almost every unit in SC2 does not move while attacking. He is correct in that no unit does a steady stream of damage: each attack has a cooldown, even if it is short. Marines attack once every .86 [Blizzard]* seconds. Void rays, which we will see in the next mission, are air units that shoot continuous lasers, but they actually do damage once every .5 [Blizzard] seconds. Moving while attacking allows you to hurt units while avoiding them (i.e., stutter stepping marines against melee units allows your marines to functionally shoot on the move, dealing damage while avoiding it), and to allow your units to do damage to enemy units or structures while moving into position. In a few cases, it allows you to use your units to damage retreating units, as well. There are plenty of other micro tricks which may-or-may-not come up in the course of the campaign chunk of this LP, but I'm fairly sure a lot of them would be showed off in a multiplayer component.
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Feb 16, 2014 05:15
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Synastren posted:Stutter stepping units is not to increase the amount of damage they do directly. What Raldan is actually doing when he stuttersteps his marines is he is cancelling the attack animation with a move command. Functionally, it allows units to attack and move at the same time, as almost every unit in SC2 does not move while attacking. He is correct in that no unit does a steady stream of damage: each attack has a cooldown, even if it is short. Marines attack once every .86 [Blizzard]* seconds. Void rays, which we will see in the next mission, are air units that shoot continuous lasers, but they actually do damage once every .5 [Blizzard] seconds. Moving while attacking allows you to hurt units while avoiding them (i.e., stutter stepping marines against melee units allows your marines to functionally shoot on the move, dealing damage while avoiding it), and to allow your units to do damage to enemy units or structures while moving into position. In a few cases, it allows you to use your units to damage retreating units, as well. If you play the Starcraft Master custom game, there's a few times when this comes up. An example is taking out a group of Marines with a single Banshee, by having it fly in front of the pack, turn around to fire a shot, then move again before its momentum runs out. That one may have taken me more than a few attempts.
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Feb 16, 2014 05:41
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I don't know the context for the video, but usually macro refers to maximizing production back home to get the most units, whether that be actual base management or making new bases. Something to remember is that the original starcraft controlled loving horribly in a lot of ways. While in starcraft 2 you can simply select all your buildings and press a button to have the unoccupied one start producing, in starcraft you could only select one building at a time to tell it specifically to make a unit. You also didn't have the option to have newly made workers go to gather resources automatically, they had to be told to as they were completed. The efficiency of miners also decayed along a gradual curve as an accident of their AI being poor, while in SC2 their efficiency stays relatively stable until you reach the maximum number for a particular base. What this meant was that actually getting full use out of your bases took a ton of time and attention that had to be balanced against your micro, or actually managing your units as they fight. Stutter stepping is one of them, pulling injured units to the back is another. The original starcraft was also much more demanding in terms of micro attention since unit pathing was just bad in some cases and there were tricks for firing on the move or extending the range of some units. It also had a similar control problem to buildings in that you had to manually select which of your units with special abilities would be the one to use it rather than trusting the game to intelligently select which to use. Being a micro vs. macro player was a broad distinction in starcraft, though I'm not sure how much it is in SC2. There's still elements in the game like having your worker reach an expansion just as you get the resources or keeping your resources active by always having them being used on units in production rather than locked up in the production queue.
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Feb 16, 2014 05:45
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I also downloaded the intro pack for this game thanks to this LP, which goes on just after the point we've gotten to so far. I'll probably buy the full game, just gonna check if it's cheaper in-store tomorrow before I put my money down. So I'd also like to ask people to keep this thread spoiler-free, there were some very dodgy posts in the first few pages! Looking forward to more updates to see if I can keep up playing on normal mode!
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Feb 16, 2014 23:41
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Raldan posted:I believe they're given basically infinite resources. Generally in missions, you're not really dealing with a standard enemy base collecting resources to produce units. A lot of the enemies you see are usually set, where they'll plan to make X units to attack at time Y. Infinite resources isn't a big deal because a ton of what you'll be dealing with is scripted. When you can make units rain from the sky, resource limitations aren't what you're worried about. Something I'd like to add to this is that what you see on the map as a player isn't the whole map. Many of the maps stretch beyond what you can look at and get to just enough to hide buildings for the AI to use for building units, mining, and tech. If you were to play Evacuation and wipe the map clean, you'll see drones coming from off-screen to rebuild structures that were destroyed.
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Feb 19, 2014 10:11
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Star Man posted:Something I'd like to add to this is that what you see on the map as a player isn't the whole map. Many of the maps stretch beyond what you can look at and get to just enough to hide buildings for the AI to use for building units, mining, and tech. If you were to play Evacuation and wipe the map clean, you'll see drones coming from off-screen to rebuild structures that were destroyed. Wow, that sucks. That's awful.
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Feb 19, 2014 10:42
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The_Frag_Man posted:Wow, that sucks. That's awful. Not really. It's generally easier to just meet the mission's requirements than it is to destroy every enemy building on the map. For the most part, maps that bleed over like how I described are mainly the kind where you're defending a position for a certain amount of time. Some of the maps have those hidden enemy bases but are hidden in a position that you either can't get to or that are very difficult to reach. In Evacuation (I meant to say Zero Hour in my first post), there's that big area in the east that Raldan never got to where there are a ton of zerg units and structures and I believe that's where the nydus network originates. But many, if not all of the maps where you don't have to defend or are played with only handful of units, of the missions can be beaten by erasing all of the enemy structures.
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Feb 19, 2014 11:19
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It's probably just an easy way to ensure that maps like Evacuation don't end if you manage to destroy all the structures you can see when the 'point' of the map is that the place is about to be overrun.
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Feb 19, 2014 16:26
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The_Frag_Man posted:Wow, that sucks. That's awful.
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Feb 19, 2014 17:53
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 Update Voting: Upgrade 100,000 Credits available Combat Shields - Marines gain +10 life. 50,000 Credits Advanced Medic Facilities - Medics no longer require the Tech Lab add-on. 60,000 Credits Incinerator Gauntlets - Firebats gain a 40% larger area attack. 40,000 Credits Juggernaut Plating - Firebats gain +2 armor. 85,000 Credits Concussive Shells - Marauder shells slow all units in target area. 70,000 Credits Kinetic Foam - Marauders gain +25 life. 90,000 Credits Research Shrike Turret - Outfits all bunkers with an automated turret. Fortified Bunker - Bunkers gain +150 life. Mission Outbreak 110,000 Credits 2 Zerg Research New unit: Hellion The Devil's Playground 110,000 Credits 3 Zerg Research New unit: Reaper Voting will end Sunday Feb 23rd at 1:00 pm EST This update's a little late, but I'm going to try to keep a schedule of one video a week. Also, as we get more upgrades to choose from, I'll remove the ones that aren't getting votes. Raldan fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Feb 22, 2014 |
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Feb 22, 2014 09:21
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Personally I go with the health boost for the bunkers, since I really liked buying the extra space for them and using them that way. Since you're not really interested in bunkers much I'll just vote for the The Devil's Playground, Shrike Turrets, and Combat Shields.(Changed my mind, the Shells will be far more useful in Outbreak later) Campaign Reapers are too drat useful in Outbreak.
Cador_2004 fucked around with this message at 10:56 on Feb 22, 2014 |
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Feb 22, 2014 10:41
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Upgrade: Combat Shields. We're going to be using the Marines the entire campaign, and without the upgrade they're way too fragile. Research: Shrike Turret. Knowing your playstyle, if we vote for Fortified Bunker, you probably won't even show it off. At least Shrike Turret might get some use. Mission: The Devil's Playground. Reapers look cool.
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Feb 22, 2014 10:41
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Concussive Shells Fortified Bunker The Devil's Playground Screw the colonists, Jimmy gots ta get paid! 
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Feb 22, 2014 10:42
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I will use the bunkers in a couple missions, but most missions involve being active on the map instead of sitting back and defending. You will be seeing either the fortified bunker or shrike turret eventually, just not very often.
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Feb 22, 2014 10:46
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Concussive Shells because who doesn't like bombs that slow? Shrike turrets Because then the bunkers they give you can contribute. Plus the correct solution is always more dakka. And uh. Outbreak so we can get another new building.
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Feb 22, 2014 11:19
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Combat shields - Marines are bloody useful when they're not all bloody. Shrike turrets - The other upgrade sounds better, but seeing how little you use bunkers, might as well get something that makes the ones the game gives you slightly less useless. Outbreak - Raynor was a vulture rider once. How could he say no to a vulture with a flamethrower attached?
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Feb 22, 2014 11:23
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Let's go with: Combat Shields Fortified Bunkers The Devil's Playground
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Feb 22, 2014 11:32
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Jetpacks beat go-karts. Let's go to the Devil's Playground. Marauders should get Concussive Shells, with the way you play I see it paying off the most for now. And our research should be on the Shrike Turret, whatever helps kill stuff faster! (Just to be sure you can always switch out the research for the opposite one, right?)
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Feb 22, 2014 11:49
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Lunethex posted:(Just to be sure you can always switch out the research for the opposite one, right?)
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Feb 22, 2014 11:57
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Combat Shields Shrike Turret The Devil's Playground
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Feb 22, 2014 12:09
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Ahahahaahahahaaha why is Robin a scientist? Anyway Combat Shields Shrike Turret The Devil's Playground
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Feb 22, 2014 12:18
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RareAcumen posted:Ahahahaahahahaaha why is Robin a scientist? Sylphosaurus fucked around with this message at 12:50 on Feb 22, 2014 |
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Feb 22, 2014 12:47
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Concussive shells, Shrike Turret and Devil's playground.
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Feb 22, 2014 12:52
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Concussive Shells, Fortified Bunker and The Devil's Playground In my experience the bunker gun is just one marine without the range of a bunkered marine while the extra hit points does wonders for survivability.
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Feb 22, 2014 13:21
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Sylphosaurus posted:She's a scientist in the proud tradition of the Umbrella Corpration or Weyland Utani, so of course the ancient artifact won't be a problem since there's no way that it could operate on a whole different level than current science!  I think we're thinking of totally different Robins here. I'm also referring to Stetmann in the video. 
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Feb 22, 2014 13:56
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Voting for Concussive Shells, Fortified Bunker, and The Devil's Playground.
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Feb 22, 2014 14:27
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Concussive Shells, Shrike turrets, and Devil's Playground.
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Feb 22, 2014 15:15
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Concussive shells Devil's Playground Fortified Bunker Shrike turrets sound interesting, but they don't really add a whole lot to bunkers. A bunker costs 100 and a marine costs 50. It's often more cost effective to just buy more marines(they can stim) if you want more damage. Plus the entire point of a bunker is tanking things with it's face, and on the missions where they're useful there should be an army behind them to provide the damage. e: of course shrike turrets are adorable so they have that going for them.
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Feb 22, 2014 15:39
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The_Frag_Man posted:Concussive Shells, Shrike turrets, and Devil's Playground. Seconding this. Also, your Smash and Grab video seems to cut off at the end before you could say something.
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Feb 22, 2014 16:53
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Combat Shields; Marines are too squishy. Shrike Turrets, to give the inevitable empty bunkers some purpose other than just free minerals. The Devil's Playground, to get
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Feb 22, 2014 17:43
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Outbreak to show off that mission with the unit it's intended for, Concussive Shells, and Shrike Turrets.
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Feb 22, 2014 18:22
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Combat Shields; Shrike Turrets, The Devil's Playground
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Feb 22, 2014 19:30
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StarFyter posted:The Devil's Playground, to get
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Feb 22, 2014 20:04
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I like how the top buttons on your tech console spell out SA LP 
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Feb 22, 2014 20:27
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Advanced Medic Facilities, Shrike Turret, Outbreak. Crank out those Medics!
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Feb 22, 2014 21:13
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oh yes oh god yes form the head FORM THE HEAD unghhhh...
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Marines are always useful so Combat Shields, I'm neutral on the research, and The Devil's Playground for my favorite Terran infantry. It's just a shame we didn't have them for Smash and Grab where they're also really hilarious.
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Feb 22, 2014 21:24
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Get Combat Shields ASAP since marines are a staple throughout the game. I vote The Devil's Playground for next mission. Research doesn't matter much since you're not really going to use bunkers anyway.
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Feb 22, 2014 21:35
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Combat Shieldsbecause Marines can always stand to be a bit less squishy. Concussive shells can wait one more mission. Shrike Turretsto give the things some purpose, since they're not getting used much. The Devil's Playgroundfor a unit that's actually useful outside of its featured mission.
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Feb 22, 2014 22:21
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RareAcumen posted:
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Feb 22, 2014 23:17
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