EPTScouting
What a simple word. But what does it mean?
Observer says: “I see what your doing there.”
The only thing you should be interested in when scouting is what your opponent is doing. What a broad thing to say. Look out for these things:
- how many geysers does he have?
- when did he get them?
- what unit producing structures does he have?
- what upgrade/tech facilities does he have?
- what does his standing army look like?
- where is his standing army?
- where/when did he expand?
While playing it is essential to know what your opponent is doing and do not allow your opponent to know what you are doing.
It is really common for people to cancel tech buildings (mostly as protoss) when they are scouted/scanned and take a different rout. They are anticipating the opponent to counter what they saw and countering the counter to that counter.
Macro
![[image loading]](http://i56.tinypic.com/dd55l.jpg)
you don’t need this many.
The number one advice given ever. But what does it mean? My personal definition of macro is something to the effect of:
“To optimally utilize unit producing structures.”
What a broad thing to say. What does this encompass?
Well in order to optimally utilize unit-producing structures one must be collecting resources at an optimal rate. So have all your miners mining where they will be the most useful. Lots of cool people have done awesome guides on things like this.
Pairing
Optimal saturation
Zerg <3 Sheth
To optimally use unit-producing structures one must be constantly producing out of all of them (potentially nexus/command center excluded). This means do not have down time on your barracks or gateways or have larva sitting around forever. If you have too many minerals(or queued up units); you have too few unit producing structures. If you have idle unit producing structures; you have too many and cant afford them. If your unit producing structures are unable to perform because of supply block; you didn’t plan ahead/don’t have enough money to produce constantly and build pylons/supply depots/overlords. If you have tonnes of gas and not enough minerals; you took your geysers to early and lost out on minerals you could be using.
So basically perfect macro is always having “just enough” supply, “just enough” minerals, “just enough” gas and no idle buildings.
Basically get the most out of your resources.
Constantly Produce SCVs/Probes
Something we always see zerg dealing with is larva management. Because they do not have different unit producing structures one is not always reserved for worker production.
Thus they “cut” drone production to produce other units in mass.
One must know that good players of other races also “cut” worker production at very specific times. These times will optimally correlate to “Timing attacks”
Check out how he stops making probes and also how he saves chronoboosts around 40:00.
Knowing how many probes you will need to reach your desired attack and support it is essential knowledge often looked over in build orders. The minerals spent on additional probes can be used immediately in strengthening your attack.
If you are planning an attack to win the game all your resources would ideally be utilized to strengthen it.
Spamming “3 ee” during a game deciding battle and not having enough resources to warp in reinforcements is bad.
The ideology here is that you need to make enough workers to achieve what you want to achieve. With the exception of certain game changing stratagies, your going to want to be constantly producing workers for a long time if you plan on being on more than 2 bases.
Timing attack
![[image loading]](http://img-android.lisisoft.com/img/2/2/2266-2-drimacus.clock.protoss.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://img-android.lisisoft.com/img/1/9/1988-2-analogClock.Drimacus.jpg)
One of the most over used terms in starcraft ever. Second maybe to metagame. A timing attack is attacking at a specific time. This is when something you have just done will give you an advantage. Because it won’t give you an advantage forever using this “thing” you have just done to inflict damage before you opponent “catches up” is doing a timing attack.
Good example: +1 attack and charge are aligned to finish at the same time. You’re halfway to his base when this happens and proceed to attack immediately.
Lets create an arbitrary measurement of unit value to help me explain my understanding of timing attacks. This measurement is basically “how good is my army” including upgrades abilities researched etc etc. Both you and your opponents will generally be having a steadily increasing “goodness” of your army.
Lets do a case study. You get one less unit producing structure than your opponent and get a “tech” building which will grant you an “upgrade”. Very arbitrary stick with me.
![[image loading]](http://i1193.photobucket.com/albums/aa348/stark3r/goodness.jpg)
Your opponent’s army (red) grows faster than yours (blue). Therefore its goodness increases faster. When your upgrade finishes the goodness of your army instantly takes a jump. Ideally like the situation depicted in the graph your goodness will be gooder than your opponents. Because he is still gaining on you, ensure your meeting at the highest goodness differential in your favour by attacking immediately after the upgrade finishes. And as a necessity before the red line catches back up.
You don’t know when his goodness will take a sudden jump or increase its curve dramatically. Thus its important to attack when you know your goodness just took a big step up. This is what a timing attack is. Other examples include capitalizing on when you know your opponent’s goodness has been slow to increase lately (i.e. they take an expansion), or when you know they cannot have taken a certain jump yet (i.e. before stim).
ESPORTS
It’s awesome stop hurting it guys.
Metagame
With attempts to not pain any moderatetemperatures or people named Metagame I seek to justify my use of this term here.
I will argue that anticipating a commonly used tactic is outside of the normal rules of the game and can lead to altering your decision-making.
I want to talk about abusing these expectations.
Perfect example right now is PvZ.
Protoss forge fast expands, zerg is probably going to do a heavy roach ling attack.
Protoss knows this and gets extra cannons/walls in/is scared its coming.
A zerg player seeing a FFE can “gamble” off the opponent’s expectation that this is coming and just drone like a fiend while taking a third and fourth, denying scouting.
It is important for new players to acknowledge this “mind game” and how it plays into the
One must constantly be anticipating what their opponent is going to do and simultaneously be misdirecting the opponent’s expectations.
That is all. I want to talk about these things/misconceptions so feel free to ridicule and criticize to spark discussion.
