I was wondering if any of you fellow players could help me by answering some questions regarding scouting.
I am a 3200-3300 mmr random player(I always tell my race). I often have trouble reading the intentions of my opponent. I know the basic stuff like if I don’t see a 2nd base that means some big aggression and/or cheese is about to come or if the 3rd base is late it means they invested their income in a big 2 base push but that’s about it. I don’t know the intricacies of scouting like checking worker counts or gasses etc. My questions are:
1 - How often do you scout? Do you have a scouting frequency, pattern or thought process?
2 - When is the first time you scout and what do you check with that first scout?(same for the 2nd and maybe the 3rd time you scout please)
3 - When you send a worker scout, is it better to look around the base for proxies or to go straight to the opponent’s base?
4 - If the opponent is able to deny scouting(walling off the natural, hiding tech buildings at random locations, hidden bases, faking upgrades etc.) , what do you do until you figure out what is actually going on? Do you keep spending your money on the safest/all around units possible or do you save some of your money in order to spend it after you scout what’s going on?
5 - What are your personal red flags that you scout and then a big exclamation mark appears and you get a red alert?
Since I play all races I would appreciate if you can give me tips on all matchups so it doesn’t matter which race you play. Both your own experiences and your observations from pro plays are appreciated. Thank you very much
As a terran player - though admittedly not much higher than your MMR, my first scout generally depends on what race I’m facing. TvZ it’s usually a reaper scout unless the opponent is familiar to me (which does happen sometimes). TvP I’ll almost always SCV scout on 17, generally to see if it’s a fast expand, gas first or super early double-gas build/one base cheese. This is almost always followed by a reaper, ideally looking for the 2nd pylon, because if that’s not in the base, it’s almost always going to be a proxy of some kind. I’m also looking to see what tech they put down (stargate, twilight, robo).
TvT will be an SCV scout. I usually open 15gas/16rax/17gas here because of how rife reaper cheeses tend to be, and get out a fast factory. The follow up scout comes from the 3 reaper 2 helion pressure, generally trying to identify mech or bio.
Follow up scouts are often done through drops primarily.
Again, race dependent. For Zerg, if you have larvae to spare, banking money isn’t to big a deal. Protoss is somewhere in between with warp-gate and robo/stargate tech, but Terran I almost always spend my money because having something is better than having nothing at all, and the way terran production works basically means you’re producing slowly as it is.
For me, TvZ is almost always a lack of an early 3rd base, or fast 2nd gas, TvP is a missing 2nd pylon, or again, fast 2nd gas. TvT, missing Rax. After that it’s very up in the air.
You scout basically non stop. Light aggression opens up opportunities to do damage and also scouts at the same time.
You scout always, and you look for predictors that indicate aggression is coming. This can be anything from an unusually large army, to the production facilities that will produce the army.
You definitely go to their base. You can tell if a building is missing and you can even count their workers to see if a worker is missing. Their worker count and missing buildings can predict what the proxy is in 99% of scenarios. If you see three SCVs missing, it’s a proxy 3 rax.
You invest into things that have dual use. For example, some zerglings have dual use. They can be used defensively or offensively, so if it turns out that you read the game state wrong, he wasn’t attacking you, you can get value out of them by going across the map and putting on some pressure. If you build a spine craweler, it’s totally useless if an attack didn’t come.
Another option is to simply default to an aggressive style. If you don’t know what’s going on, you can just allin. If he is allining, too, then you are equal. If he is doing light pressure or is greedy, you are ahead.
A missing third pylon, a probe in a weird place or coming from a weird angle or timing, a lack of a scout (no need to scout if you are allining from 1 base), a missing natural’s hatchery (or a delayed one), etc.
Basically you have to know what is usual and then you have to be able to identify what is unusual and how that unusual behaviour corresponds to something aggressive. A probe coming from behind your natural is a strong predictor of a cannon rush, for example.
In 2v2 it is a bit different as you can respond to your allies movements but I don’t scout, even when my ally scouts it can be of little consequence to me, what you are really looking for is specific build orders. Something like a cannon rush, a proxy of some sort or very aggressive build order or a very early expansion pattern. Definitely after 5 minutes of the game you can expect 2 bases to be mining and even a third base, if it is a third base you will need to use some aggression against your opponent(s) to punish them for greed at the very least if not kill them outright. Often build orders will be expecting these exact types of moves, scouting allows you to circumvent their defenses in a way that will be more appropriate to the specific scenario. You must also have your own strategy in mind as doing nothing for too long just to be able to respond is not good.
How do you check the number of SCVs missing? Do you double click their SCVs and then yours and compare or do you know how many workers they should have at any given time? I feel like these types of details are often lost on me because whenever I control a worker or a unit at my opponent’s side of the map my mind goes crazy like “I have to be quick!” , “I have to jump back to my base and keep building!” , “My pool shouldn’t be 3 seconds late.” or “my orbital command should have started 5 seconds ago” etc. . I know this is a “me” problem but it’s hard for a low level player like myself
It should be pretty obvious if you do it enough and you make a point of counting their workers when your scout arrives. If you count and it’s low, then it’s probably a proxy. This doesn’t work as well vs Protoss since a proxy only requires 1 worker, unless it’s a cannon rush in which case it will be 2 missing. But, in the case of a cannon rush, you’d see the forge with your scout. The timing of the forge is important. If it’s a 10 forge, that’s a very fast fast forge.
So, you count workers and cross reference that with what buildings you see, and the timings of those buildings, and it tells you what they are doing. Usually a 12 scout is fine, meaning you send out a scout once your supply reaches 12. The timing of when they put workers onto gas is also useful. In ZvZ, this predicts when metabolic boost is started and/or when a fast lair is started. If he’s mining an early gas and his ling speed hasn’t been started, it’s a lair.
You don’t need perfect accuracy for what they are doing – a general sense will be fine. You don’t need to know the exact timing of his lair, just that it’s faster than usual. So, you switch from drone to army production a bit faster.
You can’t double click the enemy units, but you count them with your eyes. If you would try to learn to send 2 workers at the closest minerals patches, your eyes will very fast learn to see, where there are 3 workers on the minerals patch or 2 workers on the distanced patches. With that skill, you will be able to notice, that 4 patches are being mined by 1 worker, which tells you, that he has 12 workers, but you at your base have 15, so where are these 3?
