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End of day feelings: Progress!
Things focused on: Steps 2 and 3 of the Staircase
Completion of Focus: Finished Steps 2 and 3! Average SQ of 80.7
End of Day Placement: Bronze (Top 8!)
I started out today continuing trying to do my normal build with the Staircase technique of only building certain units... after a few games I realized that only making marines it is so hard to keep my SQ low with that one barracks fast expand build I was doing because I end up with my 2nd expansion just before 10:00 which makes my money skyrocket... which is good but only making barracks and CCs it means that I have to expand again soon in order to do something with all this money, so then I get my 4th base at like 14:00 and then I just run out of space to build more barracks fast enough to keep my money low and places that are safe... so I have like 30 Barracks and am churning out so many marines... who then all disintegrate because my opponent has tanks. Oh well.
So all of that is to say that I stopped doing the one barracks fast expand and now start expanding closer to 7 or 8 minutes and get my third around 15 etc. This is for two reasons... Firstly is mentioned above. Secondly it's because the fast expand is to get an early economic advantage, however it's not a real advantage if it just means that I have a crapton of money saved up. I'd be better off not expanding till later and building a big army quicker, which will help more when I am not building any tech stuff, if I can attack him before he's got tanks then I'm likely to win, but if he sieges up then I'm just going to throw meat at him till he overwhelms me.
So I switched builds and my SQ skyrocketed (the low average is from my first game in level 3 where I had an SQ of 30 with my old build). In fact on my 3rd pass on level 3 I managed to get a 107 SQ!
So I managed to work through levels 2 and 3 today, so starting tomorrow I am going to be building marines and marauders and able to micro them as well. I'm not doing a LOT of micro when I'm microing, but things like focus firing and going up ramps and whatnot make a pretty big difference.
 
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On November 16 2012 18:02 Jombozeus wrote:
wat da fak is SQ?
Spending Quotient, defined originally in this thread:
Basically, how low you keep your money.
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I think you've completely missed the point of the exercise. If you are unable to keep your money low building marines off 2 bases, then you're not meant to move to the next stage.
You say the early expansion isn't an advantage when you can't spend the money, but that's the entire point of the exercise, learning how.
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On November 16 2012 19:00 Zealos wrote:
I think you've completely missed the point of the exercise. If you are unable to keep your money low building marines off 2 bases, then you're not meant to move to the next stage.
You say the early expansion isn't an advantage when you can't spend the money, but that's the entire point of the exercise, learning how.
This. SQ lies to you if you get better SQ by having less resources, you're supposed to build more marines, not build less bases. You simply need to learn to build barracks and marines faster, you should be able to have 10 bases and still keep minerals down. Besides, with a 1rax expand -> mass marines, you should pretty much win by 10-12 minutes in bronze if you literally keep your minerals down, just check filterSCs bronze videos, this is exactly what he is doing. (Should be noted that with 50 SCVs on 2 bases, you need a surprising amount of barracks to keep minerals down building only marines, I'm talking 15 or more raxes, your main base will usually not be enough space, so you need to spam raxes everywhere... which is fine, because unless your opponent has amazing macro, he can't touch you with the amount of marines you should have.)
The main point, which I think is covered a few times in the original SQ thread, is that SQ by itself is pretty useless, it only makes sense in relation to income. Higher income = harder to maintain good SQ. Anyone can have perfect SQ on one base with only 10 workers.
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Man I don't know about any of this crazy SQ staircase mamma jamma stuff but congrats on getting to the top of bronze. Just keep practicing and study (actually study, write it down and memorize it!) builds and practice against the AI.
Edit: I rarely have the desire to ladder any more but if need someone to play a punching bag, shoot me a PM and I'll macro and defend while you do your stuff.
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ur def missing the entire point of the exercise lol...
the point is to show you you need more barracks, so you can produce more marines = spending your money better.. the idea isnt just to build another CC everytime u get 400 minerals because you arent building enough rax/marines lolol....
this is like getting to a point where you have 20 CC's and only 2 rax... but ur money is low so you think ur macro'ing well lol
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Thanks for your comments guys, I appreciate the feedback.
You make some good points. I don't feel like I explained myself really well in my original post, but that said anyway I think you're right for the most part. I still feel like trying to clarify a little bit but will do my best to make it not sound like "nuh uh." If you don' believe me skip to the end where I say you're right again and conclude this. 
I'm not having issues producing marines off of 2 bases, that's easy, the problems I was having started with my 3rd base and then were worst when I had 4 mining bases. At 3 bases I'm pulling in around 2400 minerals per minute (not counting mules) meaning that I would need 24 barracks churning out marines non stop and would still have enough left to build depots and still probably float around 200 minerals. I could do the math, but this is close enough. Doing this I've had my income peak as high as 3027 which is 30 barracks pumping out marines.
Looking back over my games I've seen where my problems lied the most in keeping my SQ low in these games with this fast expanding mode. Firstly there is a rule built into the staircase saying that you can't build more than your current active CCs +1 barracks at any one time, and with that rule I just couldn't get up to those huge (24-30) barracks numbers fast enough to pump out marines. The other main reason that I was having issues was my army would max out and then I have 2k+ coming in per minute that I can't do anything with until I can attack which a minute at 4k minerals will destroy your average unspent. Lastly I just had issues finding places for all these barracks I was throwing up which made me REALLY easy to kill since I was so spread out. When I won I won in the first 10-12 minutes, but against all of the people walling in with cannons bunkers and planetary fortresses attack moving marines into those just makes them line up like lemmings. (The attack move is part of the staircase)
So, all that being said. Again, you're right. (Told ya so! ) And I'm going to go back to the 1 barracks fast expand build that I got from Filter, but I am going to tweak the way I was doing it. I still like the idea of taking a third, but I think I'm going to try and take the third a lot closer to the 12-14 minute area than the 9-10 I was aiming for before. Filter never does take a third with this (until video 7 I think) so combining these learning strategies is going to need a bit of tweaking here and there I think. also when I get to step 5 where I start making medivacs it will turn it a lot more into a "normal" build and then it will be easier to spend money when I have something to spend it on that costs more than 50 minerals. When I get there I will probably go back to the 10 minute 3rd I have planned eventually.
Again, thanks for the comments and the feedback. It's great to hear positive feedback, but it's always more beneficial to have people tell you when you're doing something wrong. The "you're doing great!" comments help keep my spirits up, while the "Hey dumbass knock it off" stuff keeps me in the right direction, both are greatly appreciated.
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EPT
