“Direct Strike” in the arcade: not particularly complicated but there are a handful of things to learn. If you want to introduce someone to starcraft, direct strike standard mode is one of the best ways to learn units.
Since the mod is free and the basics are easy to understand, I’ll jump right into strategy.
Important General Rules
If you have a team that follows the general rules, you will win most 3v3 games: they are crucial.
- DO NOT take an early refinery/extractor/assimilator income boost. By winning fights and taking control of the middle line, your team gets 2 gases worth of income each. If you take a gas, you have fewer units, so you will lose middle control and thus, income. Your partner(s) will have to fight the army you “leaked” so they have a lower chance of beating their waves.
- If you are fighting zerg, rush to tier 2. Otherwise, spam tier 1 units. Zerglings and banelings are very cost efficient against tier 1 units, but very inefficient vs tier 2 units (lurkers, archons, hellbats/banshees). In all the other matchups, tier 2 units are not worth getting early: stalker/sentry and marine/reaper/marauder are strong enough to overwhelm a few high tech units. If your opponent is rushing for tech, be prepared to scan for detection, as cloaked units are the most common rush.
- Counter your wave, even if your ally leaks. If you’re player 2 on your team, counter player 2 on enemy team. As tempting as it is to make units to mop up leaks, it is better to hard counter the guy you “should” be fighting. Otherwise, “you have half an army that can fight 1 guy, half an army that can fight another guy, and an entire army that can fight nobody” -Cain
When Do I Gas?
Generally, you want to take a refinery/extractor/assimilator when you are confidently ahead. Here are a few benchmarks when you are ahead:
- Enemy bunker/cannon dies. The turret allows you to push back from early-game disadvantages/leaks. If the enemy turret dies, it is much harder for them to bounce back, so usually it’s safe to take a gas here.
- 3-5 minutes of confidently controlling middle income. Experience with this comes with time. If your team has early control over middle income and retains it, it can pay for your first gases, even if you haven’t killed the enemy turret yet.
- When enemy gases Pretty self explanatory. If the enemy is investing, you invest with them, except you have the middle income and are therefore safer.
If you lose middle control, you have to talk to your team and decide whether you want to A). Refrain from gassing, in an attempt to push back to the middle, or B). Gas hard up to 3-4 gases asap, in an attempt to push the game to 30-40 minutes and win late game.
Burst and Stack Units
Burst and stack units are “needy,” so to speak. They need regular units to support them, otherwise they’ll just die, and they need specific units to be countered.
- Burst units can rapidly change fights. Almost all of these have AoE abilities that usually won’t recharge. (Ex. Storm, disruptors, banelings, widow mines).
You have to be weary of enemy burst options: you may think you’re in a good spot with your Terran bio until 2 disruptors show up out of no where and ruin your day. Most of these have specific counter play: enemy disruptors will seek out swarm hosts and widow mines, which you can use to your advantage by forcing them away from the bulk of your army.
- Stack units have high survivability, whether it be from abilities or long range, and usually have low damage. (Ex. Blink stalkers, tempests, queens, lurkers, tanks, ranged liberators).
The point of stack units is to survive long enough for another wave of units to reinforce and protect them. Therefore they are more effective as the game goes on and battles last longer. Similar to burst units, stack units warrant specific counter play, such as archons vs lurkers or corruptors vs liberators. If your enemy makes stack units, aim to hard counter them asap in order to stop their stack.
Ability Control
You can hit f3, or click the purple icon above the map to open the ability control menu.
- Don’t waste abilities on leaks. There is nothing more painful than 1 marauder causing your entire army to stim or causing your disruptors to waste their shots. Very micro intensive, but it will decide games. This is especially true for tanks and liberators. If all your tanks siege to kill 1 marauder, they will take 7 years to unsiege, so all your regular units will be seperate from your tanks. Obviously not great.
Positioning
Positioning is mostly min-maxing. You usually won’t need to bother with it, but here are a few instances where it really helps
- Early game, place units far back. This is to minimize the chance of leaks dealing damage: they will ideally attack the cannon/bunker instead.
- Against disruptors, place widow mines or swarm hosts to the side of your army. Disruptors are disgusting if they can get meaty shots. You want to avoid this at all costs by drawing their fire to the left and right of your main army.
- Make multiple bursty waves. The obvious response to banelings is to have marauders or even thors up front to tank the hits. You can prevent this by having 3 lines within your wave: your main army up front and 2 waves of banelings far apart. Similar story with disruptors and widow mines.
Taboo Upgrades/Units
Some units and upgrades just aren’t worth it:
- Phoenix range, even though it’s cheap. You want your Phoenixes in front of your void rays to tank.
- Zergling speed. Weird one, but slow zerglings are the exact same speed as banelings with speed. Unless you’re spamming down lines upon lines of zerglings, your army will stick together better without metabolic boost.
- Swarm hosts. Inefficient unit, even for stack unit standards. Use only against disruptors.
- Cyclones. Inefficient unit. Too low sustain.