Worker Units
Workers...your best friends
The basic idea behind almost all RTS games remains the
same in Starcraft. Gather resources which will be needed to
build up an army to conquer your enemies. In Starcraft, there
are two resources to be mined, minerals and gas. Minerals
come in the form of blue crystal formations. You should find
several clusters near your starting point. The gas you'll need
for your armies comes from geysers in the ground. All races
must build some type of gas collecting building over the
geyser before gas can be harvested by the worker units.
Minerals, on the other hand, can be mined directly by your
worker units.
Be Efficient
Naturally, everyone wants their resource gathering units (in this
game, SCVs, Probes, and Drones) to be as efficient as
possible. With that in mind, be sure at the beginning of the
game to have each of your starting "peon" units collect crystal
from a DIFFERENT crystal formation. This will ensure efficient
harvesting of crystals in the start of the game, perhaps the
most critical juncture. Unlike Warcraft 2, where an unlimited
number of peons could enter a gold mine, only one worker unit
can be harvesting from a crystal formation at once. In fact, your
crystal collecting rate doesn't improve much at all once you
have twice as many workers as crystal formations. Once you
reach this point, it's time to think about expanding. The same
applies for the gas geysers. Once you have your gas collector
built over the geyser, only one worker unit can be inside the
collector at a time. If your "town hall" is very close to the
geyser, it becomes inefficient to have more than 4 or 5
workers assigned to gas collection. They all end up waiting in
an idle queue outside the collector.
The Most Important Unit in the Game
That headline should have grabbed your attention. What is it?
A carrier? An ultralisk? A siege tank? Nope. The most
important unit in any resource based strategy game are the
worker units. Why? The worker units are the whole economy
for a player. Without worker units, there'd be no cashflow
which in turn means there will be no money to build troops
with. If you can successfully attack the other player's workers
at any point in the game, DO IT. Run past his troops if you can
do so without sustaining too much damage. If you can
succeed in slowing your enemy's production rate, you have the
game half won. Whenever possible, scout around your
enemy's base with air units or fast ground units before you
attack. Look for the easiest way to access the production
lines, then strike at the workers quickly. Secondary targets
would include any town hall type structures, or the building that
produces a unit which is causing you the most trouble (e.g.
Wraiths causing problems for you? Target the enemy
Starports).
Email: ngriffin85@hotmail.com
