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In Brood War, you should often literally send your first unit after you scout immediately in the beginning. By the time you find them and hopefully keep your scouter alive and nearby, you will usually be done with your first barracks or whatever, then send your first attack unit. The only time this wouldn't work is if you are going hard up the tech tree, which is really risky but amazingly effective if you know your safe to pull it off.
Try to keep your units alive as long as possible. A worker unit could start building a gas extractor where your opponent needs to if they haven't already, and cancel it before they destroy it to save minerals. Another fun thing I've seen is have your worker unit try and follow their worker unit that's building stuff to prevent them from being able to. Keeping a unit where their natural expansion should land is a great strategy. Not only does it slow them down on expanding, but you know exactly when they do it. There's all sorts of stuff to do to drive them crazy, really, it goes on and on.
If they are determined to kill your harassment units then spread them out and keep them moving. The other side to all of this type of stuff is your focusing a lot on micromanagement, but if you're good with hot-keys and such you should only need to actually look at your base for a couple seconds every once in a while.
A quick tip on when your attacking with a bigger force. You may know this already, but never send them in a line. Get them to the brink of battle and line them up like you would see in old battlefield, then send them in all together. Spread your ranged units out so enemy melee have a harder time going from one kill to the next. When you notice certain units being attacked, pull them back a bit, then resend them forward. This confuses the enemy units AI into walking straight to their death without really hitting anything. For melee units, clicking behind your target is effective, then when your units are all in the middle of theirs, click attack. This stops ranged units from being able to escape before taking serious losses.... once again I haven't played SC2, so some of the mechanics could have changed how some of this stuff works, but I think the essentials should still be there. Always be flexible, if you realize your enemy has figured out what you're up to, change your strategy. If he thinks you're going hard mutalisks, for example, he's going to start creating anti-air and destroy you. Change to something else, like buffed Zerglings. This may seem like a waste of money, but the key is to make him waste more than you. When I was scouted back in Brood War during the beginning of the game I used to try to make it look like I was going to do something I wasn't. For example, I would start upgrading my Hatchery instantly or building a Hydralisk den. Then when I killed or scared off his scouter, I'd cancel those and expand quickly. By the time battle came, he'd wouldn't understand what happened. Keep him on his toes at all times.
Damn, now I really can't wait for SC2
EDIT
I just re-read your post Walter and I'm not sure if I addressed your question correctly... it has been like 7 years since I played. =P
Obviously just like real war, in Brood War you'd make attacks that aren't necessarily targeted toward winning the game in one fell swoop. Strategic attacks such as destroying worker units, supply depots (or overlords and pylons), condensed armies that are gathering, or whatever... are essential to winning the game in the long run. From memory the most effective strategy would be a drop of a small number of units that can harass for a long period of time. Or... the prevention of their expansion for a long period of time.
As far as drops go..... those strategies change faster than the new style of flip-flops, so I sadly can't say much. The key is to know their tech build and counter act that. This probably sounds like common sense, but if they're going for a massive zerg, use units that do massive splash damage in a short period of time. If they're going for the hard hitters, try to distract those units away while you drop on his economy when they aren't looking. Lastly, the most important information I can give on a drop is, once you see backup arriving, pull out. Like I said earlier, keep your units alive as long as possible. It's all about resources. Even if you think you're going to lose your ground units, don't risk your drop ship. Even sending an empty drop ship into the enemy base has a psychological effect on your enemy. Think about it, they don't know it's empty, so when they see it they'll send reinforcements there in preparation, in which case you can attack from another front.
The best strategy for preventing their expansion is easy. Place a worker/scouter unit, or if you can a stealth unit, at literally every expansion location possible. Know the map as if you had a map hack. I can't tell you how many times I got called out for hacking simply because I knew exactly where my opponent was just because they couldn't figure out what I was doing. A logical though sometimes risky maneuver I'd pull using this strategy was having a unit at a point of expansion but not necessarily using it to block their attempt. I'd take note of it, let them build it up just a little bit, then slip in and annihilate it before it had any real defenses. That completely wrecks their resources.
Try to keep your units alive as long as possible. A worker unit could start building a gas extractor where your opponent needs to if they haven't already, and cancel it before they destroy it to save minerals. Another fun thing I've seen is have your worker unit try and follow their worker unit that's building stuff to prevent them from being able to. Keeping a unit where their natural expansion should land is a great strategy. Not only does it slow them down on expanding, but you know exactly when they do it. There's all sorts of stuff to do to drive them crazy, really, it goes on and on.
If they are determined to kill your harassment units then spread them out and keep them moving. The other side to all of this type of stuff is your focusing a lot on micromanagement, but if you're good with hot-keys and such you should only need to actually look at your base for a couple seconds every once in a while.
A quick tip on when your attacking with a bigger force. You may know this already, but never send them in a line. Get them to the brink of battle and line them up like you would see in old battlefield, then send them in all together. Spread your ranged units out so enemy melee have a harder time going from one kill to the next. When you notice certain units being attacked, pull them back a bit, then resend them forward. This confuses the enemy units AI into walking straight to their death without really hitting anything. For melee units, clicking behind your target is effective, then when your units are all in the middle of theirs, click attack. This stops ranged units from being able to escape before taking serious losses.... once again I haven't played SC2, so some of the mechanics could have changed how some of this stuff works, but I think the essentials should still be there. Always be flexible, if you realize your enemy has figured out what you're up to, change your strategy. If he thinks you're going hard mutalisks, for example, he's going to start creating anti-air and destroy you. Change to something else, like buffed Zerglings. This may seem like a waste of money, but the key is to make him waste more than you. When I was scouted back in Brood War during the beginning of the game I used to try to make it look like I was going to do something I wasn't. For example, I would start upgrading my Hatchery instantly or building a Hydralisk den. Then when I killed or scared off his scouter, I'd cancel those and expand quickly. By the time battle came, he'd wouldn't understand what happened. Keep him on his toes at all times.
Damn, now I really can't wait for SC2
EDIT
I just re-read your post Walter and I'm not sure if I addressed your question correctly... it has been like 7 years since I played. =P
Obviously just like real war, in Brood War you'd make attacks that aren't necessarily targeted toward winning the game in one fell swoop. Strategic attacks such as destroying worker units, supply depots (or overlords and pylons), condensed armies that are gathering, or whatever... are essential to winning the game in the long run. From memory the most effective strategy would be a drop of a small number of units that can harass for a long period of time. Or... the prevention of their expansion for a long period of time.
As far as drops go..... those strategies change faster than the new style of flip-flops, so I sadly can't say much. The key is to know their tech build and counter act that. This probably sounds like common sense, but if they're going for a massive zerg, use units that do massive splash damage in a short period of time. If they're going for the hard hitters, try to distract those units away while you drop on his economy when they aren't looking. Lastly, the most important information I can give on a drop is, once you see backup arriving, pull out. Like I said earlier, keep your units alive as long as possible. It's all about resources. Even if you think you're going to lose your ground units, don't risk your drop ship. Even sending an empty drop ship into the enemy base has a psychological effect on your enemy. Think about it, they don't know it's empty, so when they see it they'll send reinforcements there in preparation, in which case you can attack from another front.
The best strategy for preventing their expansion is easy. Place a worker/scouter unit, or if you can a stealth unit, at literally every expansion location possible. Know the map as if you had a map hack. I can't tell you how many times I got called out for hacking simply because I knew exactly where my opponent was just because they couldn't figure out what I was doing. A logical though sometimes risky maneuver I'd pull using this strategy was having a unit at a point of expansion but not necessarily using it to block their attempt. I'd take note of it, let them build it up just a little bit, then slip in and annihilate it before it had any real defenses. That completely wrecks their resources.