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For the lower league players, I often think obeying the "queuing is bad" rule bites them more than does them good. Because not using your minerals is worse than having a full queue.
Early game, when your income is low, that is of course a bit different, because then you have to make more decisions on what to spend your minerals, and you spend your money on a lot of different, even conflicting things. But once production infrastructure is up, there is not a lot of decision making on what to spend going on anymore.
Once you have 3 bases at latest, especially with terran who have mules, and have the most queues, your income is so high, that the case when you wanna build an expansion, or another barracks, and you don't have the money, because it is already queued up somewhere, this simply isn't a problem anymore. If you don't have the money right away, send your SCV to the location you wanna build, and by then you have the money.
The gas income is of course a lot slower and regular slower the whole game. But the gas spending as also a lot slower the whole game, so it is easier to learn a spending rhythm there.
In summary, especially for terran, don't be afraid to queue the mineral expensive, fast building units like marines and hellions, possibly even marauders and vikings sometimes. It is easier to learn slowing down on the queuing later than to not having a big enough army.
For Zerg it is of course different, since only upgrades queue there, and getting an upgrade is always a conscious decision, so the queue is just a convenience so you can add the next when the completion bar is close to finish.
For protoss this also only applies in a limited sense, since you don't really mass units early when warpgate is not finsihed, and anything out of robo or stargate is not a cheap mass unit.
So: "Keep your Money Low" is more important than "Queuing is Bad". There, I said it.
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the thing is though, all the marines you got queued could be made into more barracks instead.
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I still think that's a bad habit, and it should be far better for newer players to start learning the correct behaviour. Why queueing when you could build new production facilities with the money left?
However I understand you reasoning and agree that, especially at lower level, when players hardly keep their money REALLY low, queueing a bit is far better than not having a continuous production of workers/military units.
Still, however, new players should aim to to win now, but to learn a correct behaviour to win more later. Queueing, anyway, I feel could also be a good idea a moment before an attack where you know you have to micro a fair bit, so that you don't fall back in macro while doing it.
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Learn things properly from the begining IMO. Bad habits can be hard to get rid off.
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Queuing is bad because it gives you a feeling that you are able to keep your money low, but instead you are just hiding the money. It's important not to queue to learn when you can afford to get another production facility instead of just queuing more units.
Money queued still counts to your available money, you don't actually spend it until the unit you paid for is really in production, until then it's just hidden money and doesn't contribute to "keeping your money low".
Maybe in the lower leagues it doesn't matter, but everything above lower diamond needs to keep the money low without queuing, otherwise they simply get overrun.
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I agree, queuing is good. for most players, because it yields you a faster army than not queuing, also queuing requries less apm than actually building new structures which can't be done with the keyboard alone and while you're in combat. There comes a time in about every game where I have four nexus queuing up 5 slots of probes all, sure, it may cost me some minerals, but in the end it's better than even the chance of not producing probes at some point. (Though to be honest, after winning two games with 160+ probes, I think I might need to cut down a bit.)
Unless you have the mechanics to jump back to your production buildings spot on time every time the cooldown is 0.5 seconds before elapsing, then queuing will definitely help you.
Another thing is that you can cancel a queue for a full refund, so you just have to remember what you have queued. I say it's preferable to having idle production structures.
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If you have a problem with queuing, you are playing the wrong race. ZERG FOR LIEF!!!
(of course you can still queue on upgrades/Queens, but the argument still stands)
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On December 15 2010 17:11 TheKing. wrote:
If you have a problem with queuing, you are playing the wrong race. ZERG FOR LIEF!!!
(of course you can still queue on upgrades/Queens, but the argument still stands)
protoss is the same way...you're not going to be able to queue colossus, immortals, voidrays and the like.
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The whole point is that you're supposed to add production capacity instead of queueing to "Keep your money lower". If you're at 1000 minerals and decided to queue up marines in all your barracks as T, you'll be at 2000 minerals by the time the last marine comes out that you queued.
A good "rule" as to always add extra rax (T), gateways (P) or hatcheries (Z) whenever you are continously producing out of all your prodcution structures (spending all your larvae) but you're still starting to save up money. It doesnt have to be perfect. Supposing you play T, just take it is a rule to slam down a barrack if you're at 400 minerals while producing everywhere. And if you're at 1000 slam down 3 or 4 rax. Even at higher levels of play people sometimes bank up way too much money but doesnt seem aware how to spend it.
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Canada13389 Posts
My argument is as follows by keeping your money low in a queue you aren't really keeping your money low. That money is being "spent" without doing anything for you and its better off available to be spent elsewhere. Its like paying your phone bill with double the required money so you dont have to "pay" it next month. I would rather have the 40 now incase i need it than give it to virgin mobile for example for a phone bill that hasnt come yet.
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Guys I think you misread the point, it's not about dumping money away, it's about preventing the chance that structures may idle. Structures will simply idle if you try not to queue. And I think them not idling is indeed more advantageous than having money available slightly sooner, especially when you can cancel it if you so please. .
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Don't get into the habit of queuing units in general, it's one good way to help improve your macro game.
Queuing is only fine IF you know your build well and you know for sure that building those units will not affect the production of workers/buildings/other units. However, you may still need the money for emergency purposes in the event of an attack (e.g. building static defense) and cancelling those queued units will take time which will hinder your ability to fight the attack. Many (including myself) may also be in a state of panic and forget to un-queue those units.
Exact same situation happened to me before and cost me a game.
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On December 15 2010 17:21 netherDrake wrote:
Don't get into the habit of queuing units in general, it's one good way to help improve your macro game.
Queuing is only fine IF you know your build well and you know for sure that building those units will not affect the production of workers/buildings/other units. However, you may still need the money for emergency purposes in the event of an attack (e.g. building static defense) and cancelling those queued units will take time which will hinder your ability to fight the attack. Many (including myself) may also be in a state of panic and forget to un-queue those units.
Exact same situation happened to me before and cost me a game. I find keeping a mental tab on which buildings I have stuff queued up in to be a lot easier than keeping a mental clock to get back to my production buildings at every set interval to produce new units and stop them from idling. I mean, especially in the heat of a battle you can forget to keep producing.
I still think queuing is a good habit as long as you train yourself to unqueue if you need stuff and train an awareness of which stuff you have queued up. Pressing a hotkey and then escape twice really doesn't take that much time.
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Keeping you que low is a basic economic principal which everyone should try to follow.
Think in terms of cashflow and business and you'll understand. Why would you put your money into something that is going to be produced in 1 minute?
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While terran is the marine/mineral machine after getting up on 2 expos, queueing in general is a bad for the obvious situations where you are faced with an emergency, you need to tech switch, etc etc, and those habits do permeate through your game.
Especially at the low level, the fear that your production buildings may idle (spend you money for terrans) is one that should always be on ones mind, and queueing up really prevents you from gaining that awareness of your game that is so crucial (i dont know if terran hotkey barracks often as a zerg, but this clearly would improve your hotkey skill as well).
Are there times to queue up marines late game? Of course there are (although the best answer is to make enough production facilities to match your economy). Should you be queuing in lower leagues? no you should not.
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Teaching yourself to queue up so as not to have idle structures, ever, is going to be incredibly beneficial for winning a couple of games in bronze league.
When one player is trying to macro, but has too low apm, and so is only producing 50% of the time out of 5 rax, and some other dude is queuing up, and producing 100% of the time out of 3 rax, the 3 rax guy will have more stuff, and win.
20 games later, the 3 rax queuing up guy will be queuing up, cose it works so well, but the 5 or 6 rax dude will now be able to have all those buildings making stuff 90% of the time, and will crush him.
50 games later, the guy who tried to improve his macro is now in diamond/platinum, and the guy who is queuing up is still queuing up.
It all depends on what you prefer, a few quick wins in bronze, or actually getting better in the long run, perhaps at the cost of losing a few games right now.
Im in low diamond as zerg, and when I try to spend 5 or 10 games just worrying about not missing a single spawn larva, ever, well I lose quite a lot in the immediate, but in the future, it should pay off.
I could make more hatcheries instead, but that isnt going to pay off in the future, just help a little right now.
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Queing = not spending your money You have thrown away your money within that timeframe onto something that you get absolutly nothing from. The only thing it does is to give you the illusion that you have spent money and it will steer you away from learning how to macro properly. That is it.
When you dont que and when you learn to macro properly you will have alot of new ways to explore strategy within the game, so weather you are top diamond or low bronze this is the absolute thing to master if you want to be good at this game -> long term.
Don't Que. Keep your money low. Don't get supply blocked.
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On December 15 2010 17:09 Morfildur wrote:
Money queued still counts to your available money, you don't actually spend it until the unit you paid for is really in production, until then it's just hidden money and doesn't contribute to "keeping your money low".
I'm speaking of low level play here. But yes, queued money is not actually converted into unites yet. It bought you attention and mental capacity to concentrate on map awareness and/or micro.
Improve one thing at a time. And I'd say queuing is a small price to pay to concentrate on other aspects of the game.
The only thing it really conflicts with later in the game is to decide when to add another producing structure vs. another unit. Upgrades/expansions are decisions based on general game situation, not on your bank account. And this conflict is not really a conflict either, because there is an optimal mathematical solution for it:
1 Barracks costs 3 marines + 1 marine worth of SCV mining time, e.g. 4 marines in minerals, and ~2 marines worth in time. Reactor is ~1 marine cheaper, depending on how you evaluate gas.
Coincidentally this is queue size. So if your queue is always full, and your money is still high, and you want more of that stuff, it's time to add another barracks.
I'd say once you hit a ceiling with that approach, you are good enough to improve on it. Because early game you shouldn't queue anyway, and the better you get, the later you can push that "start queuing" time.
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Just don't do it, it doesn't matter that queuing might be easier in lower leagues. It's just a bad habit that's going to bite you in the ass when you move up a league. Play to get better, not for winning now.
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Queing gives you the ilusion that you are spending your money when in fact you are not.
/thread
User was warned for this post
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EPT
