Before I begin; this is a bit of an experiment. My writing style is more of a rambling speech, and I'm by no means an expert on Starcraft, so please let me know if I'm being too long-winded, or if something I'm saying is completely out of line. I would just generally like feedback from you all; what do you like, what don't you like...Should I keep writing or am I an idiot that should never be allowed near a keyboard again? Let me know!
I've finally decided to get back to the original purpose of my blog; tips and general advice for lower league players. To that end, I thought I'd start out with a fairly under-emphasized component of mechanics: timing.
Timing is, in my opinion, critical to a players' mechanics, and it's something that requires a great deal of practice to get down. So what exactly do I mean by "timing"? Obviously I'm not referring to various key timings for each of the match-ups (Like 6:30 for Banshees in ZvT), instead I'm referring to the speed at which you can chain together keystrokes and mouse-clicks to accomplish a variety of tasks.
When we think about mechanics, we usually think about using hotkeys, control groups, and never clicking anything we can access with a keystroke. Timing is the next step, and it's not exactly a small step to make. It requires a lot of work and a lot of conscious effort.
So what the hell is this timing thing? On a basic level, it's simply coordination between your right and left hand. It's how quickly you can mechanically switch between radically different tasks without errors. How quickly can you go from lightly microing your lings in a Protoss' main to injection/making units at all of your bases, and then back again, and how much do you mess up while doing that?
Those mess-ups are timing issues; accidentally changing the rally point on your hatcheries, or move-commanding all of your lings into a wall of colossi when you mean to send your corrupters at them; these aren't issues with mechanics, they're issues with timing.
You click before you've got the thing you want to control selected, keystrokes start getting muddled up, and before you know it you've got a complete mess to clean up with your army charging at some cannons and your waypoints sending drones to long distance mine that gold expansion.
Screwups are going to happen and they're going to happen a lot, but that's how we get better, right? So how can we really focus on our timing and our mechanics? In my opinion, the best place to start is with cheese. Not even on the ladder, just cheese the hell out of some Very-Hard AI. Drop a pool on 7, and pump lings nonstop once the pool pops. Once your lings are in the AI's base, don't look back to your main for anything. Reinforce, avoid supply blocks, and make a queen when you can afford it, but do all of this with control groups and hotkeys. Then go back to microing your lings, without skipping a beat.
Once you can do this successfully 100% of the time(it's not that difficult) move on to a more macro-oriented, but still aggressive, build. The key is the aggression. You need to be controlling your units AND macroing like a boss at the same time. Stick to one-base if you can't handle two-base management, and just focus on quickly switching between macro and micro. The key is aggression; be aggressive as hell! If you come back from some aggression and find yourself with 600 minerals, and 18 larva, make some overlords and mass up another army, and tell yourself to focus on the macro a little bit more with your next attack/next game. If you come back with 3000 minerals and 30 larva, you may need to go back to the 7-pool for a while, or try a less macro-oriented build =P
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This is mostly criticism, but it needs to be said.
You title your post like an article, but then it's just a wall of text. Structuring it a little bit, add an introduction (or label the intro so it's not lost in the paragraphs) would make me more inclined to read it.
Also, 95% of the community uses "timing" in the sense of (as you mentioned), "attacking at this moment with this army comp". Your "timing issues" sound more like mis-micromanagement.
It's cool that you're trying to help the community, but to be honest your post isnt that helpful. Getting better at using the keyboard and training handspeed/accuracy comes from practicing the game completely. This means having a large army, having a base with lots of production that you need to manage, engaging in battles that require you to control your army in a certain way. Advising people to 7 pool and just be aggressive is not the way to get better at starcraft.
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On February 25 2012 04:34 Ry-Masta-T wrote:
This is mostly criticism, but it needs to be said.
You title your post like an article, but then it's just a wall of text. Structuring it a little bit, add an introduction (or label the intro so it's not lost in the paragraphs) would make me more inclined to read it.
Also, 95% of the community uses "timing" in the sense of (as you mentioned), "attacking at this moment with this army comp". Your "timing issues" sound more like mis-micromanagement.
It's cool that you're trying to help the community, but to be honest your post isnt that helpful. Getting better at using the keyboard and training handspeed/accuracy comes from practicing the game completely. This means having a large army, having a base with lots of production that you need to manage, engaging in battles that require you to control your army in a certain way. Advising people to 7 pool and just be aggressive is not the way to get better at starcraft.
Criticism is a good thing =P Thanks for the advice, it's just a topic I've had floating about in my head for a while that I wanted to get out on paper. I'll try to provide more explicit structure (I actually really like that idea, not sure why I went with the essay structure instead >_>)
The 7-pool idea is more a starting point for the development of decent mechanics; the idea of building units, albeit slowly and in small numbers, while also managing a small army requires that you have a basic grasp on mechanics, and the more you practice something, even something as stupid as a 7-pool, the more efficient you get at it, and the better your sense of timing becomes. Once you've got that foundation you can gradually build up to multiple base play and large, diverse army micro.
On the one hand, these timing issues are mis-micromanagement, but to an extent I think they are also an issue of their own. Constantly being aware of what unit you have selected, and what keys you need to press in order to either do what you want with that unit, or to do something else with another unit, is pretty much the idea I'm trying to focus on.
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EPT
