EPT
"The Plan" and Improving at Starcraft
I spent some time contemplating what it takes to get good at Starcraft. Now, typically, you might say "Macro" or "Practice" or something similar, and strictly speaking, you wouldn't be incorrect. I'm not talking about what it takes to get better at Starcraft, though. I'm talking about what it takes to get good. For me this means reflecting back a couple years to the beta, when I first began-- I was definitely bad. I could barely function as a 1v1 player, had never heard of TL, or the proscene, and in a typical game would randomly produce structures and buildings (gradually climbing the tech tree) and making whatever units seemed reasonable. In addition to my poor mechanics, total lack of game sense, and utter inability to understand the basics of sc2 strategy, I didn't have a build order or plan-- I was just randomly doing things.
In time, though, Bronze* League was not enough for me. I wanted to improve. I spent some effort thinking and theorycrafting, and in time I constructed a Plan. It wasn't a great Plan, but it was mine, and it was a Plan. Roughly speaking, my Plan (and the underlying reasoning) was this:
"Starcraft is a hard game to play. You win by having a big army, but making a big army is difficult. So, what do you do? Well, you make a big army in the easiest way possible. Figuring out how to deal with "Vespene Gas" is difficult, and causes more harm than good. Although it would be optimal to incorporate Vespene Gas into my build, I'm not skilled enough to execute complex build orders like that properly. Therefore, I will not build a refinery. My plan for every game is: 1) make a supply depot, 2) make 4 barracks so I can make marines, 3) make an orbital command (make sure to start this after the 4 barracks, because if I make it earlier it delays a barracks!), 4) move out when I have 30 marines. By using only minerals and delaying my orbital command, I can use a big marine army, and attack-move it to victory!"
Yes, that's correct. My Plan was 4 rax before OC, A-move at 30 marines, and I didn't pull scvs. It was utterly bad, I executed it poorly, I didn't know how to micro and literally lost against any enemy who used banelings, or got a siege tank (or hell, a bunker)-- but I'll be damned if I didn't improve vastly using this Plan. I got into Gold League.
How is this possible? Well, having a Plan focuses you. You have a set of goals, benchmarks-- and it forces you to critically evaluate how well you executed it each game. In the game itself, even if your Plan somehow gets derailed (cannon rush, early pool, someone else marine rushes you), you don't go sputtering into the abyss-- you try to get back on track. You stabilize, and push forwards towards your Plan again. The 4 Rax marine rush (and other builds I eventually learned like Cloak Banshee rush, 3 Rax Stim, 1 Rax FE, etc) improved my play immeasurably just by having a well laid out, clearly hammered down Plan to follow.
*: At the time, Bronze was the second-lowest league of five, analogous to Silver today. The leagues were Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, Copper. Yup, Copper. I'm not joking. Look it up kids.
only trolling, having a plan is indeed very helpful, but I'm still definitely of the opinion Mechanics>Macro>Plan> all else
