SC2 Basic Mechanics Review

Due to the fact that many people sadly do not watch either HuskyStarcraft or HDstarcraft, it is possible that said people will probably not be able to understand me whilst I ramble on about minerals and vespene gas and whatnot.

So, a short review of the basic mechanics:

1. Basic Controls
Left-clicking on a unit selects a unit or structure. Right-clicking causes selected unit(s) to perform what would be the most convenient action depending on circumstances.

Hotkeys exist as a shortcut to access commands such as Attack, Gather, Move, Hold Position, etc.

2. Income
You can play as:

…The Terran Commander, who controls what are essentially humans in the future. Mild technological advances, a lot of explosive weaponry, and a big focus on infantry. They are divided equally between Light and Armoured, and Biological and Mechanical in terms of units.

…The Protoss Executioner, who controls “psionic” sentient beings that coincidentally walk on two legs. They also use a lot of machinery, and their buildings and units are very different from the Terran’s. Their units are almost always Armoured.

…The Zerg Overmind, who controls the _other_ alien race. Where the Protoss represents sentient technological peeps, the Zerg represents the Alien F&cking Swarm of Carnivorous-ness. The Zerg do not really use the concept of individual minds, preferring to go with the “Hivemind” idea. All Zerg units are biological, they are fairly divided between Armoured and Light.

Regardless of which race was chosen, the game will always begin with each player having 6 harvester units, a base structure, and 50 minerals. (Zerg players also start with one larva and an Overlord.)

All production in SC2 is fuelled by the primary resource, minerals, and the secondary resource, vespene gas.

Both resources are collected by your harvesters (SCV’s, Probes, Drones), although to collect vespene, you must first construct a Refinery/Assimilator/Extractor on the Vespene Geyser, after which gas may be mined with a consistent stream of 3 harvesters, each yielding 4 Vespene per trip to the Geyser and back.

3. Objective
The objective of the game is to destroy all the opponent’s buildings. It is more common to see the opponent surrender after your army has marched into their base and is doing “The Pillage”, although bm’ing (bad manner) Terrans have been known to float their buildings to the opposite corners of the map, an annoying technique that usually only prolongs the game until the enemy develops FLYING UNITS. This is definitely no use if you crushed their army with MASS F&CKING MUTALISKS DAMMIT but is otherwise REALLY STUPID AND ARROGANT.

If all enemy buildings are destroyed, you win, regardless of how much bigger the opponent’s army was than yours.

If the opponent does not have any operating bases being built or alive, the opponent will, about 30 seconds after the last base was destroyed, have all their buildings revealed on the minimap. This reveal is stopped by building another base.

4. Production
Units are produced from buildings, which are made by your harvester units (which are made by your “base” building, which you started with anyways). These newer buildings that you build further allow you to build new units to kill you opponent with.

Some buildings do not directly build units, but rather allow you to construct new units at previous structures (as is the case with pretty much every f&cking Zerg unit). Others research upgrades.

Upgrades improve a certain part of any of your units. General upgrades are researched at structures such as the Engineering Bay, the Evolution Chamber, and the Forge, and improve certain unit types’ attack and durability. More certain upgrades exist, e.g. Psionic Storm, which allows High Templars to do something actually useful and utterly annihilate enemy infantry. All upgrades are permanent from the point of researching and also affect existing units.

Production of units is limited by your supply cap. You cannot produce units if you don’t have enough supply to support them, although you can have units while not having enough space (if you are supply blocked from one of your supply things dying, or the Zerg Extractor Trick works also). The supply cap is raised by building Pylons, Supply Depots, Overlords, or bases. Your supply cannot exceed 200. Note that the Overlord is actually a unit that costs no supply (it raises the supply cap instead).

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Post a comment below saying whether the next unit overview I should do should be a Zerg unit, a Protoss unit, or a Terran unit.