EPTSo, if you've been following along you know that we've effectively gotten a build order established and have a good theory of how to use it. Today is the first step of converting that theory into actual gameplay. And as anyone in SC2 can tell you, the key to building a powerful army is to first construct a strong economy. And the most important rule for developing an economy is to always be making workers.
Why any delay is bigger than it seems
While the specific math varies, assume for the moment that any worker you make will be gathering 40 minerals per minute (5minerals/7.5sec). We're going to look at a case of a Terran command center constantly making workers for 10 minutes, which adds up to about 35 workers created. My question for you is this: How many minerals are lost if the first worker is delayed by 7.5 seconds? At first glance, I've had many people answer 5 minerals. But the important thing to remember is that delaying the first worker results in a delay of every single worker after it as well. So instead of just losing 1 mineral return, we've lost 35, one for each worker that was delayed. So the end result is that over the course of 10 minutes we've lost 175 minerals because of forgetting a worker for 8 seconds. That's obviously a huge loss for a single mistake.
This is why it's pushed so hard by anyone telling you to improve to just macro better. That one mistake cost us over 3.5 marines of army size. So look back at some replays, and focus on the first 5 minutes. Look at the number of seconds for those 5 minutes that you weren't making a worker. The math works out to over 20 minerals lost over 10 minutes for each second that a worker was not producing. So do that multiplication (20*n n = number of seconds not producing a worker) and you may discover why the other guy seems to just have so much more stuff.
Alright, so we understand now why not making workers is such a big deal. But how do we go about fixing it? Well, to be honest, laddering or playing practice matches is really not the answer here. If this is a problem, what we want to do it simply open up a custom game, and start by just making SCVs and supply depots (or probes and pylons). JUST SCVs AND SUPPLY DEPOTS. That is it. This is to help learn and internalize the timing of when you need to be selecting that CC and hitting S. Once you have that down perfectly (and I mean 0 seconds of not making workers when able), then we can add in an actual build order. Do that build order over and over again until you are able to make workers 100% of the time and execute the basic build to your satisfaction. This can get boring, so feel free to only try a few times a day before actually playing so matches. I promise the reward will be worth the patience. The last step is obviously to start playing actual matches, and keep track of how well you are able to make workers under pressure from the opponent.
When trying to improve in this manner, always place making workers as your top priority. Yes, that banshee needs to be scanned or that zealot needs to be killed, or you want to watch your units destroy the other base. Guess what, I don't care. And neither should you. Because when trying to get better, we aren't playing to win just one match. We're playing to win so much more than that. Winning now is good, but winning more later is great. Keep that in mind, don't worry about losses, and in no time you will be flying up the ladder.
More discussion of macro mistakes will be coming tomorrow.
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