Early scouting is important to know what kind of strategy your enemy maybe using, I am not very good at this thus wanna discuss some of them here and what action is wise to do when you had your scouting result.

For example you do scouting when you have like 10 harvester and your enemy is a zerg and they had a pool and only 6 drones, that mean very high chance there will be some zerglings(zergling rush) in your base b4 you have your 1st marine or zealot are out, you better stop making harvester and start chrono on your gateway or seal the entrance asap.

please list some scenario you have seen b4 in your scouting and what prevention or action should be taken, thanks.

When you see that the opponent has nothing in your base = cheese such as cannon rush, proxy barrack/gateway but normally its too late and trying to survive might be hard.

what do you mean by "opponent has nothing in my base", isnt that normal ?

probably he means nothing in his base.

Maybe just like forge instead of gateway bcos if u see a forge and a pylon 1st normally it's a cannon rush.


Or maybe against a terran tat didnt wall off with a barrack or dun have barrack at all in his base instead of 1 or 2 supplt depot which means he/she is going for PROXY.

sumthing like tat.

depends on matchup and maps...
i time my scout based on maps and matchup...
small maps i'll scout after my first pylon due to cheese..

at times vs terran, i avoid early scout even for cheese as my standard build vs terrran can handle cheese pretty well thus i rather have the worker to mine...
not to mention all u see is a rax (and gas timing) wit taht probe LOL

Constant scouting is the key.

If you see 6 pool, prepare the block your ramp or his. If you see gas and noting else in his base, prepare for reaper rush, if you see mining probes with nothing or forge, it's canon rush. It's very easy to spot these cheese but if you don't scout, you'll end up beaten by those cheesers. However, if you manage to stop these nonsense, the game is 99% yours.

scouting is VERY VERY IMPORTANT.

use whatever means necessary to scout. worker/scan/rax-float/overlord/overseer/changeling/one marine/ling /observer/pheonix/hallucinated pheonix/viking/ whatever.

even in mid-late game. ALWAYS SCOUT.

i most likely be using zerg, normally i would spread my overlords around the map for scouting, not sitting on normal ground, but on cliff or where normally a land troop will not be able to see or go there and attack them. But when i see enemy got air-air ill need to collect them back, most of them, due to ill lose many of them if i let them remain outside, so my scouting ability will drop, changeling usually dont work on terran due to they seal their entrance, and flying an overlord or oversee into terran base will not be able to fly out. As a zerg i found its easy to scout at the starting of a game but will be difficult when enemy getting air.

overlord can spit a spy rite? i was shocked when i watched replay the guy put a marine in my base. No wonder all my banshee taken out by those pores although i hid them at far corner

yes, and that called changeling, as i said if the terran sealed the entrance, the changeling cant get in, changeling do not see hidden, they saw your banshee so they prepared, its quite easy for terran to tell which is a spy, as long as he is outside of the base, he is a spy =P unless the oversee spit that inside the base.

Usually you would notice the changeling when you try to move your army and you notice that got one unit not moving.
Usually if want to sneak a changeling in, you would have to sneak it at a spot they won't notice. Not easy though if they put up turrets around the base.
But later they move the army that time also they'll start to notice. Why that marine not moving one haha.
Oh yea. Can just set it to follow one of the troops.

A few things to be vary of for various races.
The hard part is still scouting the terran as they wall off.
Worst case would be to sacrifice 1 overlord hovering nearby just to see what structures is he going.
This is usually for cases that are not cheese since it was already covered above.

Terran:
3-4 barracks with tech labs.
Incoming marines and marauders on the first attack or only marauders.
Concussive shell and stimpak is probably on its way.

Barracks with a reactor and you managed to see a factory.
Watch out for hellions. Try to block your ramp with units and move your spine crawlers to it when creep reaches there.
Best is to just get speed for your lings to counter this.

He is going 1/1/1. 1 Barrack, 1 Factory and 1 Starport.
Mech build incoming. Mostly marauders, tanks and thors with vikings and medivac.
I seldom meet this as protoss though. Should usually happen against zerg players.

Zerg:
A roach warren after the pool and hatchery still not upgraded to lair.
Incoming roach with ling rush.

Lair almost immediately and there's no roaches.
It's either hydralisk or mutalisk. Watch out for which building comes out first. The hydralisk den or the spire.

Protoss:
2 Gates up before the cybernetics core.
Watch out for a zealot rush. Usually next you see is another 2 gates coming up.

2 gates and then a cybernetics core. He is going the normal zealot, sentry and stalkers.

1-2 stargates
Phoenix or void rays are coming.

robo facility with 2 gateways
Immortals and probably colossus is coming. Watch if he builds the robo bay.
Hard to scout this out though as it is already late game and there is probably a lot of stalkers to shoot down your scouting overlord.

Hope I got those right.
Please add or correct me if I'm wrong.






This post has been edited by tatyinw: Sep 8 2010, 01:46 PM

nope, if you issued command to the changeling to follow a marine, most likely they cant notice, cause they select all, they cant see didnt selected that 1, and issued command to move, that changeling also follow 1 of the marine, so they cant notice too, 1 big problem will be enter bunker/vehicle, which that changeling dont have a PASS !!

You have so much time to check every single troop you have by entering and exiting bunkers, why don't you spend more time in attacking your opponent instead?

i have a big problem scouting between rushing and teching opponents, especially zerg and terran.

terran cos my probe sure die after his first rax/marine, then after that i'm blind. so how would i know whether he's turtling and teching, or pumping out mass mmm from 4 rax?

zerg i got trouble too cos e.g., if scouting toss i see 4 gate i know he'll come at me with mass gateway units. but zerg only need 1 pool, and with queens and fast expand he can easily come with me with 30+ lings in like ... 1 minute?

zerg cant get that amount of lings in 1 min, max larvae production from queen = 10 per minute, so max 20 lings from 1 hatchery. that is consider rush, stopping production for drones, etc, and assuming he has that amount of overlords b4 start production of lings. ok maybe thats not much, 15 unit count, =2 overlords.

wow, nice. normally i don't really care what they build...unless they tech to siege tanks or colossus. hehe =P

why mech need starport ?

For me, if I spotted pylon and forge at their entrance, almost 100% the player will quick tech to voids soon (the forge then later will be accompanied by several photon cannons around it).

Starport for Medivacs, so MM bio ball gets heal. Or vikings, etc. Is that what you asked?