On May 21 2008 05:13 PsycHOTemplar wrote: Cycling through your army hotkeys (ie: 1234123412341234123412341234) is not useless spam, for one reason: when you're busy macroing your base, if you're spamming that at the same time, you'll respond much quicker than someone who isn't already spamming that. It takes away that second of thinking "Hey, I'm under attack, I should press 1, 1, to get to my army and start microing," because you're already pressing 1 before you've even though of it, so all you need to do is press 1, one more time (and since your mind is already on it from constantly spamming, this is faster too).
And I think training yourself to be able to handle the cycling is one of the hardest things to do T_T
On May 21 2008 04:53 ArC_man wrote: The point of this exercise is to build up your speed so when you start playing at a higher level, your hands are coordinated and fast enough to execute quickly without fucking up.
It's just like doing basketball exercises like in this video:
You'll rarely do something like that in an actual game, but the exercises build solid mechanics that you can then incorporate into your game.
Oo great analogy, didn't think of this one before.
I like this exercise. I think it's great for noobs like myself. Basically after playing 3 games against the comp I've increased my APM from 50-95.
-Keeping minerals below 300 or at least trying to has really made me faster and my build orders tighter. I can get mutas out by 7:15 now rather than 9:00 or more when I first started. Keeping gas low is easy but I still find it hard to keep the minerals under 2000 when I'm in mid-game using lurkers/defilers and I have 3 bases all together. Keeping in mind that I'm still playing computers, now against much tougher AI. (I plan on working my way up, from Entropy, to Raccine 3.0, to 2-3 Raccine 3.0 opponents and finally to bnet and iccup until I can get the basic mechanics down.)
-Trying to get 300 APM forces me to DO something. Check the opponents health, rotate through my hives, check on my army etc. This has improved my multitasking, my larvae count for each hive usually is 1-2 now constantly, rather than 3 for 1-2 minutes.
This the best exercise I think I've ever done for starcraft. It's increased my APM from 110 to roughly 200. My macro is definitely better now and Im going to keep doing this untill I can play well at a high APM.
Well, thinking about if this exercise actualy works or not, to see if I should try it for myself I had several thoughts.
Since it is learning something there are enough analogies to take from other areas, you have to find the right one. Reading a book as fast as you can won't really help you learning it's content, but that would only apply to the strategical side. Only with using strategies in different situations against different players will help you find out when they work, when they don't etc. But this is not what this exercise is aimed at anyway. Of course this is aimed at pure hand-eye coordination for increasing your mechanics. Something very similar is learning an instrument, specifically guitar or piano. Obviously, flailing on the strings or keys won't bring you anywhere, but neither does doing the same to your keyboard. Repeated practice gives you the ability to play faster. Speed here should come from good technique. So you start slowly, specifically playing with a good technique. By repeating then you can go faster and faster without getting sloppy. Of course you might try to play fast right away and get decent at it. But once you got a suboptimal technique (for example using only downstrums on the guitar) its hard to break you habbits, and you will most likely have to start slow again to learn the better technique (alternate picking).
The big question is, does this apply to BroodWar (or RTS in general)?
To answer that, we have to think about good and bad techniques in Starcraft. They do exist. With a lot of training you might be able to move your army around without using hotkeys pretty fast, but a person using hotkeys still has the possibility to do it faster and more efficient. Hotkeying or not hotkeying your army is a very obvious example but there are some technical things like hotkeying your army, moving your screen or hand positions on the keyboard. It is, however, quite hard to tell, if using the arrow keys to scroll or 2 handed keyboard macro are inferior to the standard ways. A lot might just be personal preference, maybe better for one and worse for another situation. This is most likely complex enough for a diploma thesis.
So, let's pretend the player uses the best technique to do something in every situation he is in. What is the best way to learning a specific technique? There are two possible ways to learn it: -Going fast directly to get fast with it quickly. -Go slow first to get a clean technique first and then increasing the speed. I'll take myself on 1a2a3a4a5a6a as an example. If I were to move my terran ball around, I would very often miss one or two groups. While with going fast I screwed up somewhere, I could of course find the group I missed, but couldn't really tell where I went wrong (my main problem was keeping leftclick down too long, so the next group would not be selected). So I played 2 matches with only myself on an empty map and started moving the army around first very slowly, to get it down flawlessly, and then increasing the speed. I believe this way of learning your mechanics, you will end up with better mechanics later on. However, this is more work than the going rapidly method, and if you want to improve fast, and don't care that much at beating the persons on the power rank, going fast right away might be the better way to go.
A question that comes up is, does it even matter? Do the Korean pros do something like this? Do some of them go for one and some for the other way?
I'm really glad that my experiences are helping players I have finally gotten back to starcraft after a year of break haha
If anyone has any questions or anything that needs to be clarified feel free to ask ^^ It is really nice to hear that I am helping starcraft players improve
If you would like, I can also clarify what the purpose of this exercise is. I feel that some members have misunderstood my intentions. Thanks
Hehe imo the only thing you could do to make this more challenging/harder is doing exactly what BlueIris has prescribed but also using one worker to kill the computers CC. Very difficult to do but very beneficial hehe
On June 09 2008 14:22 Plexa wrote: Hehe imo the only thing you could do to make this more challenging/harder is doing exactly what BlueIris has prescribed but also using one worker to kill the computers CC. Very difficult to do but very beneficial hehe
That's a freakin fantastic idea for an addition.
When PvTing being able to multitask not just keeping the probe alive but killing the scv building the building is really helpful and can mess with their builds, and doing the exercise killing the CC while keeping alive the worker doing that really helps with that.
On June 09 2008 14:10 BlueIris wrote: Wow this has become quite an extensive post..
I'm really glad that my experiences are helping players I have finally gotten back to starcraft after a year of break haha
If anyone has any questions or anything that needs to be clarified feel free to ask ^^ It is really nice to hear that I am helping starcraft players improve
If you would like, I can also clarify what the purpose of this exercise is. I feel that some members have misunderstood my intentions. Thanks
Do you actually attack the computer, or just sit and amass units whilst keeping your mineral count low?
Well, I attacked the computer to a certain extent.
I made sure that I am always microing a unit(s) whether that be a probe or a group of dragoon/zealot. I expanded and challenged myself to meet the macro requirements. You will want to mass units and attack as to keep your psi count low in order to continue to practice making units.
Hm this seems very interesting BlueIris, I am 140 apm toss, 150 apm terran, 170 apm zerg, I will try this and see where i get to ^^ Be back in 2 weeks lol
Well I thought I'd try this out. I never bothered trying it when it was first posted, but it seems my apm isn't improving quickly anymore.
My first game againt the comp was freaking annoying as hell. I normally average around 180-200 but this game i spammed up to 311! Keeping mins below 300 isn't even in my mind atm.
For me the problem is comp always go same strats like Protoss always will do all those Zeals and arrive at some point, Zerg turtle... i dled Entropy but I could mess up something or maybe I should activate it somehow? Yes I did install it If there is anyone who wants to train macro with D/D- 85-105 APM Zerg it would be very appreciated If you can create games it would be great even more
I usually play around 120-130apm against people so figured this could help me. However I felt like playing perfect macrowise and only had 151 apm, like nothing I could do better. Of course there's no micro element when playing against comp zerg, you don't have to dodge lurkers or defend against mutas, but with 150apm I was able to make a decent m&m+tank attack on two fronts (one non-existent) at once and making some m&m drops and expanding with proper defense while never holding over 300 minerals or gas. But it's never that easy against player who makes defilers, scourges and/or lurkers, basically keeping you microing nonstop if attempting to attack, therefor hurting macro. I don't see a way to act like this was happening when playing comp.
On June 28 2008 14:02 Ouga wrote: I usually play around 120-130apm against people so figured this could help me. However I felt like playing perfect macrowise and only had 151 apm, like nothing I could do better. Of course there's no micro element when playing against comp zerg, you don't have to dodge lurkers or defend against mutas, but with 150apm I was able to make a decent m&m+tank attack on two fronts (one non-existent) at once and making some m&m drops and expanding with proper defense while never holding over 300 minerals or gas. But it's never that easy against player who makes defilers, scourges and/or lurkers, basically keeping you microing nonstop if attempting to attack, therefor hurting macro. I don't see a way to act like this was happening when playing comp.
Overmacro. You should be able to keep your apm at 300 if you're at enough rax's/etc even with minimal micro involved. That's the whole point of the exercise: to work to get your apm and macro above what you currently naturally feel is adequate.
On June 10 2008 06:55 BlueIris wrote: Well, I attacked the computer to a certain extent.
I made sure that I am always microing a unit(s) whether that be a probe or a group of dragoon/zealot. I expanded and challenged myself to meet the macro requirements. You will want to mass units and attack as to keep your psi count low in order to continue to practice making units.
It is really personal preference
AIs are way too easy...a nice old timing push after their first initial attack will bag them usually. But I will try the exercise, sounds good
aw, i've been doing this regimen for about 5 months now.. hehe from 120 to 140 to 160 to 180 apm.. but i'm still not satisfied.. so better start exercising now!
BlueIris is actually correct.. computer can really be dull at times when you play them all day and all night.
But the good thing about playing computer is that it will not de-moralize you..
Example: I got beaten by my officemate.. our actual record will be 1-4 I 1 win him 4 wins against me..
that de-moralize be real bad..
But when I started playing the computer and started watching how progamers make 200 units within 14 to 16 minutes (how they strategize against certain match ups) that inspired me alot to keep getting faster at the same time balance the memorization of builds in order for me to increase my APM.
Anyway, my point:
if you memorize all the building process on certain matchups = APM will increase because you don't need to think about it.. It will come naturally like some one posted earlier..
EPT
I have finally gotten back to starcraft after a year of break haha 
