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The Art of the Timing Attack
By kainzero 03-03-2010 03:53 PM
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2133 views |
 EE HAN TIMING!!! So you’re experienced with RTS. You know which units counter each other. You know some build orders that’ll get you get going fast, you know about basic strategies like harassing, rushing, containing, expanding, turtling and teching… but now it’s time to learn about the art of timing. You see, with every action that someone makes, there is usually a penalty, a weakness that you need to look into and exploit. Let’s say that I know you’re going to expand and I leave it unchecked… however, for a while, you invested your resources into pumping an economy. If I turn around and decide to mass units, there is a timing window in which I will have more units and have a better opportunity to attack before the economic boost kicks in. The most famous example with this is with the early rush, when you’re trying to slowly gather resources while the opponent focuses on taking you out as quickly as possible, sacrificing early economy to build units as quickly as possible. In Company of Heroes, there is small period of time when the Americans get BARs where they just overpower everything on the field except for Machine Guns, which have to be won positionally. If the German player cannot control his units properly, he will get pushed back and lose resources that can turn the tide of the battle. This is often what decides the game, although not always. So, even more so than knowing which units counter which, it’s almost important to know when you have the advantage and when to press it. If he expands and you attack right away and you don’t have enough units to really put a dent into it then you’ve lost the game. If you attack too late, the economic advantage will manifest itself and you’ve lost the game. It’s not like a timing attack is a guaranteed win though. Sometimes, the goal is just to make them panic and squander their advantage by over-investing in defense. Most of Terran vs. Zerg in Starcraft is exactly that: one timing has the Terran forcing the Zerg to build Sunken Colonies to spend money, the other timing is when the Terran has to play defense against Mutas and is trying not to spend a lot on Missile Turrets. To me, this was by far the most eye-opening strategy lesson to learn. I always knew what unit countered what, but I never knew when to attack. Now you know. And knowing is half the battle. Porkchop sandwiches! |
 Comments (Total Comments: 2) |
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TRIXmonkey
- 03-04-2010, 02:30 PM
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Reading makes me wish I had a SC2 key even more :/
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kainzero
- 03-04-2010, 03:19 PM
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The thing with SC2 is that it's so new that there aren't any clear timings quite yet, so we never know when we have military/econ/tech advantages to time our attacks.
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