Build a couple orbital centers or never research speed increases on observers.
Keybind it to a quick key like shift + 1 for orbitals / main command center, makes it easy to scan.
Normal and hard offering hybrid difficulty (weak attack waves, but stronger mode defense waves 0 is a hybrid meant to match que times while letting a person que together with another player.
You get the higher xp of the mode. But it probably helps add in a easier transition. While it can be a bit of a extra annoyance to add in scans or a robotics bay,
It’s still a coop game so even if one ally is unprepared the other ideally could be able to help, and you can BE that ally.
Just feel free to bank a extra scan or set a observer to peek or follow the other team if you want and use alt + 3 or alt # to keybind ONLY the selected members to a group (leaving out your other units etc ). And it can be pretty handy.
Being able to keybind and seperate groups has helped put my casual pug cue times for stuff like split clearing with semi reliable 0-30 building kill allies to 90-130 building kills p3 Split pushing Odin tychuses On dead of night for instance.
Where i was able to go from worst case scenario 22-24 minute don games to 16-18 minute p3 tychus clears by getting more comfortable with split pushing control groups, chain fire, and multi army + blaze micro control (D0, clear bottom 3 Buildings, N1, defend, 0 upgrade Rattle to heal, save money for D1 Blaze with immediate spread fire on death, use N2 odin to defend south gate or north gate if needed in order to tank south gate while intercepting north gate with tychus starting chain fires and building medvac in case of chokers for emergency clears. Set up Odin to solo push south part if needed and micro blaze to set up chain fires. etc. )
(tychus has noticably low base building dps, 100 supply of marines does 1400 dps for 5k minerals. Tychus takes 3k minerals to jump from 70 to 200 dps. A powerful hero, but he often caps at like 300-400 raw Dps vs the 1000-2800 Raw glass cannon dps of some other commander’s potential. )
There’s a lot of nice parts about coop though that can come later. Some people don’t think past that and go. “haha, commander go f2a move and die, 250 minerals respawn, no healer no abilities go brrr. brutal ez”, etc.
But then those people might have horror story 36-44+ minute games where their building kills are like horror story 0-60 kills by the 40 minute mark.
And some person might be a speedster. I’m sure there’s some speed demons out there doing 7-14 minute runs on other commanders.
But Just as normal to hard can offer some learning opportunities, so can learning skills to counter your weaknesses such as lack of detection or some commander blind spots. (Tychus is a wrecking ball healbrawler of a death dealing tank.
But there’s not a lot of ways to compensate for being technically 4-7x lower raw dps f2a moving without chainfires and split pushing lol. ) Still at the same time. Learning to get your feet wet in sc2 is often the first start to getting to become a even better player at it.
And i welcome all, hope you have fun and with just a few learned tips and tricks, you can learn to decimate nearly every single army and comp amon has to offer you! Normal, hard, brutal or (some one trick pony brutations).
Knowing your commanders in and out and learning to cope or handle their weaknesses and exploit their strengths can be a great skill to have!