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On December 15 2010 18:40 Salivanth wrote:
I agree with Sil. I'm a Silver league player, and I generally have these rules when queuing:
If attacking, queue up 2 probes at a Nexus instead of 1
If on 2 bases, queue up 2 probes.
If on 3+ bases, queue up a bunch.
Never queue up military units.
I need to work on my first and second rules.
Of course, the exception is if a unit is like, 2-3 seconds from finishing, since I have imperfect timing. I'm also Protoss, so the only units I could queue up are tech units.
will eventually wanna have ~30 workers per base, and lets say 3 bases (I'd say about 90% of the non-zerg games don't go beyond 3 bases, at least not running at once), so you wanna build 90 workers per game (let's say the initial 6 are expected losses even in good games).
So your 1st base is saturated in 24*17 ~7 minutes. Your second base is saturated in 3 minutes, your third in 1 minute. Considering that you can transfer workers, and also build them up for that, by the time you may have to start queuing marines, you don't need to produce many workers anymore anyway.
Exception is of course if you got harassed badly. But dealing with that is a whole other thing, and the first decision to be made then is, if you should macro up again or just go all in. And the macroing up again often involves worker transfers, possible production canceling, whether you have something queued or not, and since your income is so low, you can't queue anything anyway.
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When I play terran, I never queue early on in the game. Once my macro starts kicking in or I am engaged in constant battles, I will sometimes queue no more than 2 units. I know this isn't the best thing to do, but I will often miss the spawn of my units and my production facilities lie idle. To me, it is better to queue 2 than to have idle buildings. Generally, if I do queue early, I try to wait until my units are at least half done to keep the wasted resources to a minimum.
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On December 15 2010 18:48 malthias wrote:
The rule to keep your money low is there for you to have the biggest possible economy and army size at any given point in time. If you queue your units, you are basically behind in army/economy size by the amount of money invested in the queued units. It means that even on one base, if you have 3 barracks with a full queue, you will have an army that could have been 12 units stronger if you didn't queue. Giving advice like that is plain bad - you are saying that low level players are bad anyway, so they may as well keep making basic mistakes and not worry about it.
1. Queuing on one base is bad. Just bad. Even I say so. I'd say it's even bad on 2 bases in most cases. I said so in the OP.
2. Queuing expensive long build time units is also just bad. Also said so in the OP.
3. The biggest economy and army at any given point is only the idea, the plan. The game is what happens while you make plans (to paraphrase Lennon  ) If you don't queue, you are much more likely, almost guaranteed, to not produce at some given point in time during a game. Which means your army won't be the biggest possible at any given point. And how many unit producing structures you need, that's something you just steal from others, or figure out in training sessions, and then do. That's not something you learn and figure out again and again each game.
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Keeping your money low and not queing is basically the same thing.
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Australia8532 Posts
On December 15 2010 19:23 RedTerror wrote:
Keeping your money low and not queing is basically the same thing.
This. Confused me more than i thought a one line post could ever; no explanation - just a straight "everything in the OP is wrong because of X"
Anyway - queuing units is just a bad habit to get into; at lower leagues you can definately get away with it but try breaking that habit when you hit diamond and it's a natural part of your game.
Furthermore - if you want to practice a technique that will ensure efficiency you should try "tapping" .. if you notice pros 'tap' their hotkeys a lot to check up on their production facilities without having to focus on their base or to allow to macro up during a battle; while scouting/expanding/doing anything just tap 4 for production facilities every few seconds, tap 5 for CC to make sure scv's are going. Just tap.. tappa tappa tappa .. easy as that.
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Some tips
As Terran, one command center can support 3-4 barracks, 1reactor rax/1fac siege tank/1reactor starport(medvacs or viking)(ie. build any variation of these every time you expand). These should completely spend your money as long as you don't supplyblock yourself. If you happen to supplyblock yourself, that's a good time to get your building add-ons as they'll be useless until you free up supply.
As Protoss, 4 gates/3gaterobo/3gate+star can spend all your money per nexus(ie. make 4 more gates/3grobo/3g+star every time you expand) unless you supply block yourself. Later on when you're sitting on a mountain of money, get all your tech buidlings. DT and HT are always great to have.
As Zerg... well... i guess you can queue queens? that's ok. Extra hatches if you run out of larva.
It all comes down to your macro awareness, however. Never getting supply blocked helps a lot but if your multitasking is sub par, it'd be more worth queueing units when macroing isn't your main focus.
But like everyone above said, nothing compares to learning it correctly and queue only if you know the limit of your play is below being able to spend all your money.
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One thing I'd like to add is, that the not queuing rule is much more important in brood war, because there you don't have multi building selection, e.g. if you queue up on one barracks, it's likely you won't be able to build in the next.
Maybe that is because so many old brood war players still stick to it so adamantly.
So, while queuing is something that must be avoided early game, and should be avoided mid game, if you notice you can't keep up with production, although you have the infrastructure to do so, it's better to queue than to not produce.
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On December 15 2010 19:37 bkrow wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 19:23 RedTerror wrote:
Keeping your money low and not queing is basically the same thing. This. Confused me more than i thought a one line post could ever; no explanation - just a straight "everything in the OP is wrong because of X" Anyway - queuing units is just a bad habit to get into; at lower leagues you can definately get away with it but try breaking that habit when you hit diamond and it's a natural part of your game. Furthermore - if you want to practice a technique that will ensure efficiency you should try "tapping" .. if you notice pros 'tap' their hotkeys a lot to check up on their production facilities without having to focus on their base or to allow to macro up during a battle; while scouting/expanding/doing anything just tap 4 for production facilities every few seconds, tap 5 for CC to make sure scv's are going. Just tap.. tappa tappa tappa .. easy as that.
Actually it's not confusing and succinctly stated. Money in the queue is just as idle money as the money in the account.
Queuing just makes sure that there is no idle production time. Which can happen quite easily in an intense battle. That's why I queue up before I go into a battle, right at the same time I set the rally to reinforce. And depending on how the battle evolves, I re-rally and re-queue. Almost exclusively happens with barracks and marine/marauder though. For everything else the build times are long enough to not miss it. And hellions aren't really massed and used that way in a battle anyway.
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my freind and i have a little joke when it comes to these 2phases,
"oh shi your money high!" it's mkkay i'm queing" ^^;
we're both ex coppers so its moar of lolage
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On December 15 2010 19:51 imbecile wrote:
One thing I'd like to add is, that the not queuing rule is much more important in brood war, because there you don't have multi building selection, e.g. if you queue up on one barracks, it's likely you won't be able to build in the next.
Maybe that is because so many old brood war players still stick to it so adamantly.
So, while queuing is something that must be avoided early game, and should be avoided mid game, if you notice you can't keep up with production, although you have the infrastructure to do so, it's better to queue than to not produce.
How is this different from SC2? It's EXACTLY the same. If you are queing, you have missed productioncycles to begin with (since you can afford it), you have missed supply depots, you have missed making raxes etc.
Sure in the very late game you will que, that's not too strange since you will not have experienced very late game very often and thus dont know how to actually spend your money, and how much you can do etc. This comes with time and practice, and if you have it in your mindset to not que to begin with, this will help your lategame to be even stronger.
I don't see anymore what you are actually arguing. If you miss productioncycles and queing helps you with atleast making the units, then that's fine, but that's NOT the issue. The issue lays where you're missing out on stuff before you actually start to que stuff -> It's a indicator that you've done something very nonoptimized in the past.
And again; Old habbits Die hard. If you want to improve more, try not to que. Ever.
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On December 15 2010 20:09 imbecile wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 19:37 bkrow wrote:On December 15 2010 19:23 RedTerror wrote:
Keeping your money low and not queing is basically the same thing. This. Confused me more than i thought a one line post could ever; no explanation - just a straight "everything in the OP is wrong because of X" Anyway - queuing units is just a bad habit to get into; at lower leagues you can definately get away with it but try breaking that habit when you hit diamond and it's a natural part of your game. Furthermore - if you want to practice a technique that will ensure efficiency you should try "tapping" .. if you notice pros 'tap' their hotkeys a lot to check up on their production facilities without having to focus on their base or to allow to macro up during a battle; while scouting/expanding/doing anything just tap 4 for production facilities every few seconds, tap 5 for CC to make sure scv's are going. Just tap.. tappa tappa tappa .. easy as that. Actually it's not confusing and succinctly stated. Money in the queue is just as idle money as the money in the account.
It confused him, because it was right on, and very simple none-drawn-out wording. Like my posts are 
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I see terrans in the GSL queue 3 units at a time in midgame, if not more. You can't possibly have enough attention to only queue 1 thing at a time.
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On December 15 2010 20:09 imbecile wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 19:37 bkrow wrote:On December 15 2010 19:23 RedTerror wrote:
Keeping your money low and not queing is basically the same thing. This. Confused me more than i thought a one line post could ever; no explanation - just a straight "everything in the OP is wrong because of X" Anyway - queuing units is just a bad habit to get into; at lower leagues you can definately get away with it but try breaking that habit when you hit diamond and it's a natural part of your game. Furthermore - if you want to practice a technique that will ensure efficiency you should try "tapping" .. if you notice pros 'tap' their hotkeys a lot to check up on their production facilities without having to focus on their base or to allow to macro up during a battle; while scouting/expanding/doing anything just tap 4 for production facilities every few seconds, tap 5 for CC to make sure scv's are going. Just tap.. tappa tappa tappa .. easy as that. Actually it's not confusing and succinctly stated. Money in the queue is just as idle money as the money in the account. Queuing just makes sure that there is no idle production time. Which can happen quite easily in an intense battle. That's why I queue up before I go into a battle, right at the same time I set the rally to reinforce. And depending on how the battle evolves, I re-rally and re-queue. Almost exclusively happens with barracks and marine/marauder though. For everything else the build times are long enough to not miss it. And hellions aren't really massed and used that way in a battle anyway.
I'm sorry but this whole thread reeks of you attempting to make something completely bad into something that's ok. Queuing is never a good thing. You can have 3 raxes all fully queued going into battle and it will be far far far worse than 10 raxes all producing 1 unit at a time. Saying "I can't do it thus I should just do something bad" is a terrible mentality that will not help you improve.
On December 15 2010 20:30 AndAgain wrote:
I see terrans in the GSL queue 3 units at a time in midgame, if not more. You can't possibly have enough attention to only queue 1 thing at a time.
Most Terrans in the GSL are completely terrible at anything past their all in. So I don't think using the GSL as the law is a smart thing to do. You should be aiming to not get a queue because that is the best possible play. Anything below that means you still have to improve.
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Queuing workers can be a good thing to do if you're busy microing. But queueing units (that are much more expensive)will hinder you from expanding, and building new production facilities (and tech buildings).
This is basically the same issue as when people build far too many production facilities just because they know they won't keep up with the production cycle. It may, perhaps, help them immediately, but it's a really bad thing to do. Just avoid it, and "lose the right way" so to speak.
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The problem with queuing is that one doesnt realize they don't have enough production facilities. My friend who is just starting the game queues little, then more, then more, until he reaches full 5 queue on all production facilities and then thinks hes okay because his money is low. Then the money goes up...and yea.
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If you've ever watched someone with an apm of 12 try to play, you would know that their effectiveness is many times greater with queuing. I think the real question is at what skill level does it start to be better to invest your attention in production efficiency.
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On December 15 2010 19:51 imbecile wrote:
So, while queuing is something that must be avoided early game, and should be avoided mid game, if you notice you can't keep up with production, although you have the infrastructure to do so, it's better to queue than to not produce.
if you have the infrastructe to do so and still cant keep up then learn2macro and get better instead of wasting money and just pushing the problem away for some time.
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On December 15 2010 20:30 Numy wrote:
[ You can have 3 raxes all fully queued going into battle and it will be far far far worse than 10 raxes all producing 1 unit at a time.
3 fully queued barracks, ignoring reactors, cost 1350 minerals. 10 raxes with 1 in production cost 2500 minerals. So not really comparable situations. The hyperbole demonstrates something though ... there is a point somewhere where a queue becomes less valuable/efficient than a new racks that builds. This point happens to be the full queue. Maybe blizzard did some thinking/experimenting on this.
Yes, you can make the big upfront investment to build ten raxes and then have a big reinforcemnt stream. I'd say it's better to build the units upfront to have a bigger initial army and then have a moderate reinforcement stream. Because bigger armies have bigger damage output and soak damage more distributed, they are more efficient in battle.
It's not only how you build stuff, it's also how you lose stuff.
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On December 15 2010 20:44 ChickenOfDoom wrote:
If you've ever watched someone with an apm of 12 try to play, you would know that their effectiveness is many times greater with queuing. I think the real question is at what skill level does it start to be better to invest your attention in production efficiency.
I'd say the point is when you start losing to bigger armies and your production can't keep up with your losses.
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No one is saying don't produce.
The queue mechanic exists because people are imperfect at macroing. Honestly, if at any point in the game you have more than two units queued (disregarding reactors) you've probably not built enough production facilities, you're not using all your production facilities, or you're protoss and you're chronoboosting probes.
I'll say again: the only time it is reasonable to queue 3 units is when you're protoss making chronoboosted probes. They come out so fast that, in order not to waste the chrono, you're better off queuing two probes, and then queuing up the third as the first comes out.
The Zerg equivalent of queuing is using a queen to inject larva when you have no creep tumors and you have unusable larvae beyond 7 per hatchery. I see many low-diamond players do this; they build their tech too quickly, build military units too early, and then don't have enough drones to keep up with the sheer production capability of two hatches with proper injects. Sometimes they just let minerals and larvae pile, absent-mindedly continuing to inject larva when they're sitting on 20 larvae and 500 minerals unused. As a Zerg player, you must strive to minimize your larvae at all times.
The exceptions to this rule are prior to a massive mid or lategame tech switch (i.e. spire tech: you should have 6 larvae for an overlord and 5 mutas or the broodlord/ultra lategame tech switch, where you generally open with broodlords and then rapidly transition to pumping out anywhere between 5 and 12 ultras) and when you're maxed.
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EPT
