Comment by zemvpferreira | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zemvpferreira | Hacker News Reader

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I don't mean to be rude (I'm a very bad Starcraft II enthusiast) but most people who complain about this problem seem to want to play a solo game for 30 minutes and then eventually meet the other player in the field of battle at the half-hour mark. That's an obvious no-go, you can't ignore 90% of the game and expect to have fun.

The way to beat players who play strong openers is to play a strong opener yourself, but not necessarily all-in aggressive. If you want to get to the late game you enjoy you must get better at the early game. Harass the other guy early, scout their build, make sure you're building counters to what the other player is playing. Defend well. Deny their economy here and there. Inevitably crush them with nukes and capital ships after 30 minutes of solid fundamentals.

(Starcraft is still a lot of fun and I'd encourage you to get back in to RTS playing)

> you can't ignore 90% of the game and expect to have fun.

I think maybe what you meant to say was "... and expect to _win_"

Plenty of people have fun turtling (:

This is one thing I liked about Total Annihilation — defense tech was relatively strong, so some amount of turtling and racing to get high tech artillery (eg) was a viable approach.

There's plenty of turtling for Terran and Protoss in SC2. Defense tech like cannons, planetarys, shield batteries, and bunkers help. It's definitely not fool proof but is classically something people struggle against.

I think a larger issue is that there's like 3-5 games to get ranked and then a bit more to get really ranked properly. And by SC2 design the early game is resource constrained so decisions are important and even with the right decisions execution is hard.

Try playing Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance Forever - it's a Total Annihilation sequel that's now community supported. It's got a decent AI and an active community of all levels. It's on Steam and often goes on sale.

Watch a few games on Youtube.

Well, honestly both! SC2 in particular is a game of rock-paper-scissors, you must know what your opponent is building in order to stay alive. If you turtle blindly against a half-decent player you'll get eaten alive.

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