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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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. .
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On December 15 2010 17:21 netherDrake wrote: 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.
What is the more common way to lose? Not being able to build a key unit/structure within seconds, or not having enough units?
Also, when you are talking about "build" ... a build means you know exactly when to build what to get to a certain point, e.g. that term is only ever meaningful up until 80-100 food, if that. In this context of course you only queue if you know exactly that it's ok to queue there. The queuing two probes and then chronoboosting them is a good example.
I'm talking about later, when you have enough bases (do you really have a planned out in detail build after you have 3 bases?, maybe as zerg, but those don't queue anyway). At that time there is so much else to attend to, that freeing up time is essential. Because not noticing something on the minimap, miscontrolling etc. is much more likely to cost you the game than having ~600-1000 min in queues.
Because even if you have to build something in an emergency, I don't think there is anything in the game that costs more than 400 min. And when do you need an emergency battlecruiser or mothership or nexus? And with running 3 bases, and maybe 100-200 min in the bank, this simply can't happen, you will always have enough within 5 seconds.
I'd rather have too many resources and go 'oh crap!' and build some more unit producing structures or get some upgrades than just spamming the queue. The 'oh crap!' bit is also very educational as you're less likely to do it again afterwards.
The only time you should queue units is when you're toss and you have multiple Nexuses, and you're chronoing out probes.
This is because probes when chrono boosted come out in less than 10 seconds gametime, and you waste your chrono if those probes don't come out immediately. Even so, good players will only queue the probes when 2-3 seconds remain on the last one creating, or when they chrono their Nexus and go to attack, since in a close micro battle you may spend 15 seconds on the fight instead of back at home properly producing probes.
No other time, IMO, should you queue units, because it's just not worth it.
I disagree. In the same motion that you push 4 SSS for scv's (assuming you bind your command centers to 4, press 5 AADAAD for your rax, 6 TT for your Facts, 7 BB for your starports, etc. This gets you into the habit of always thinking about weather or not stuff is producing.
If you que up stuff, you'll end up having your stuff done, coming back to it 30+ seconds after everything is done, and you've just wasted 2 production cycles, not to mention that if you have the money to que that much stuff up, you have the money to produce more structures and get allot more stuff out faster.
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.
I'm sorry, but this is just a very bad method of approaching this game imho. Sure this might net you wins, and you might raise in level on the ladder, slowly but sturdly, but you wont improve that fast, and generally you will hit a skillscieling alot faster. If you think that habbits dont die hard, then you're wrong .
It is not important that you cant focus on your micro and your mapawarness initially, because what will net you wins once you get abit better with macro is pure macro. Everyone on lower levels plays cute plays, and you will eventually just walk all over everyone up to low diamond with just good macro. And once your macro is natural you will be able to focus on the little things as sweet micro tricks and position and ofc map awarness, which will eventually be what defines you as a good player compared to others.
It will, as I wrote before, open up a whole new world of possible strategies because strategy is simply -> Where can I put my money, and where can I spend it, and when? -> Over a long term plan. You will improve so much faster if you focus on the right things from the begining and it will give you the edge over all cutsy players all up to and above 2k Diamond.
On December 15 2010 17:03 imbecile wrote: 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.
You couldn't be more right, for lower league players, queueing is to be expected and is OK. Eventually they learn anyways so I'm going to have to agree with OP on this one.
Totally aggree. You have to know your weaknesess and cut corners accordingly. Whether its queing up when u know u cant handle lategame production or adding extra turrets when u know your mariners are usually out of position.
On December 15 2010 18:15 Kyuki wrote: ... It is not important that you cant focus on your micro and your mapawarness initially, because what will net you wins once you get abit better with macro is pure macro. Everyone on lower levels plays cute plays, and you will eventually just walk all over everyone up to low diamond with just good macro. And once your macro is natural you will be able to focus on the little things as sweet micro tricks and position and ofc map awarness, which will eventually be what defines you as a good player compared to others. ...
That's the point. Especially because low level play is a lot of cutesy play, you need to be very aware of what is happening, because you will lose to it so often. And since you are talking about high level play, even Idra is bitten by it quite often. Yes, he is a supreme macro player, but Rain is in the final ...
How many unit producing structures you need per base is pretty much figured out. Once you know that, you just need to get that, which is pretty much an isolated and conscious one time decision.
I'm always for finding a "once and for all" solution to a problem, than to always scramble to keep it in check.
The problem is if you're a new player and reading this, take this into your gameplay, learn to do things this way, you might get up to gold/platinum, but then you'll finally find you don't have enough stuff, and won't be able to identify why you don't have the money.
*spoiler alert* It's the quing units you learned when you started. You're dumping money into something that won't make for awhile to keep your money low when you could/should have identified that time where your money started pooling as the time to add production buildings. When you finally start facing people with decent macro, you're going to ahve a HELL of a time figuring out this is your problem, and worse yet fixing it.
Don't fall into this trap. Spend the time to learn it right, it will yield better results in the long run, and won't take that long to learn. Take some losses, and just focus on never missing SCV's, it may seem silly to lose with a shitton of SCV's and few actual defenses, but that 5 SSS every 20 or so seconds just becomes ingrained in your head. Then make sure you're producing out of your rax's, etc. Before long you'll have more shit than your opponent knows how to deal with (untill you hit players who also know how to do this, and that's when the really cool play starts.
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.
On December 15 2010 18:15 Kyuki wrote: ... It is not important that you cant focus on your micro and your mapawarness initially, because what will net you wins once you get abit better with macro is pure macro. Everyone on lower levels plays cute plays, and you will eventually just walk all over everyone up to low diamond with just good macro. And once your macro is natural you will be able to focus on the little things as sweet micro tricks and position and ofc map awarness, which will eventually be what defines you as a good player compared to others. ...
That's the point. Especially because low level play is a lot of cutesy play, you need to be very aware of what is happening, because you will lose to it so often. And since you are talking about high level play, even Idra is bitten by it quite often. Yes, he is a supreme macro player, but Rain is in the final ...
How many unit producing structures you need per base is pretty much figured out. Once you know that, you just need to get that, which is pretty much an isolated and conscious one time decision.
I'm always for finding a "once and for all" solution to a problem, than to always scramble to keep it in check.
You're reading what I'm typing but you dont try to understand it it seems.
So what if you loose to cutsey play? Why would you care that you loose at all when you're in bronze level? It's the perfect place to learn how to get the basics down right. Learn to play and stomp bronze->low diamond and have a good backbone to improve at higher levels where you need to be more aware and have better micro to distinguise yourself from other, better, players.
You say that structures per base etc is "figured out". This just does not matter, because regardless of how you do things you will not end up with a optimized base or second base because you do macro like shit and focus on your cutsey play. You will never be able to develop new strats yourself because all you follow is a order that you think is the right one and try to follow it blindly. The issues will rarely be though that you don't know how your base/bases SHOULD look like, but rather how you actually go to how it looks like. A top player might get there a good 3 mins before a random scrub, but it might look similar. This difference will result in a major food and tech lead and we all know what that means.
I'm not saying you can't play the game like you point out, it's all fine and dandy and if you like that go ahead, but you will not improve within a longterm perspective. I'm gonna assume that anyone who is somewhat interested in climbing the ladders also want to improve at the game. If you don't then this discussion actually is pointless though.
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.
Imo, Queueing a few units for most players out there is imo ok. I'd rather see a player with 3 in queue than seeing him missing two seconds of build time every time he's going back to his rax.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The point is 3 fully queued barracks would mean that 600 minerals are not being used at the moment. Assuming you get extra 600 minerals per wave of marine, thats 4 more extra barracks that you could have thrown down, and thats 7 marines per wave compared to 3, which is a huge difference.
Queueing imo just gives you a FALSE sense of keeping your money low. After queuing to the maxed amount of units, you would realise that your money will shoot up regardless, and all the minerals/gas would start to pile up again.
Just try to cultivate a good habit and don't queue if possible. Even day9 has stressed repeatedly on this when he was still commenting on the playing aspects of broodwar. Its not even a broodwar-starcraft 2 thing, it probably applies through out all RTS games out there. Queuing is generally frowned upon and it has been justified to do so.
I go by the rule of 1 producing, 1 queing most of the time, when im microing etc. That way I can be a touch sloppy, but im only plat. The no queing thing is basically the hypothetical ideal. Its something to aim for that in reality you will never reach.
Queing up a tonne of things is bad though and should be avoided. I often end up doing it a bit late game where I get distracted from my macro when im microing and have a crazy high income but thats why im not a pro player.
Its definately a good habit to avoid queing, especially as a lower tier player, I think its one of the first steps towards improving macro.
Sometimes you just can't afford any time to hit 5sss6aaaaaaaaa1, let alone select a worker, give him a build command, and select a place to put the building.
If you know one of those times is coming up - like if you're about to enter a big battle, or begin some micro intensive banshee harass - then queue. Why the hell not? The money you spend on queueing will eventually become units, whereas if you don't queue you'll just let it stockpile and do nothing. Whether you queue or not you'll keep accumulating money and end up with enough to make some new structures once you're done fighting, but if you queue you'll also have some extra dudes.
On December 15 2010 17:08 Holgerius wrote: Learn things properly from the begining IMO. Bad habits can be hard to get rid off.
Everything you said about the lower leagues is true, and queueing would help you win games whereas trying to not queue will lose you many games. But, it's a damn bad habit and you should learn to improve so it helps you rather than bites you.
Everyone who thinks its about the minerals etc - you're missing the point.
Imagine manually working through all the macro perfectly at all of its cycles. That means building at exactly the right time, building units and upgrades at exactly the right time. It's near impossible.
Except, queuing lets you do EXACTLY that.
When you queue, you're paying for the computer to use its perfect APM to make stuff for you exactly when other stuff is finished being made.
That's the added value of queuing that everyone's so quick to be blind to.
When you're 20 mins into a macro match, you'll understand what I mean.
On December 15 2010 17:05 beef42 wrote: the thing is though, all the marines you got queued could be made into more barracks instead.
Yep i know when i go late game against zerg i have such an abundance of minerals that i generally throw down 8-10 barracks so that i can replace my marine force which is constantly bein destroyd.
Keeping things queued and keeping your money low are in no way connected -.- How do you make a solid build when all your money is hidden? If you lose a trillion games due to shitty macro it's worth it so you can maybe sometime learn to time your production cycles and play the game like it's meant to.
Only, and I mean the only instance I ever queue shit is when I have a million minerals & am making a transition to BCs so I rally a new cc to a geyser and tap S thrice. Taken that I cannot maynard any workers there any faster than that. Or maybe when I have a maxed army it's useful to queue every useful upgrade.
I tend to queue one slot up right before a huge battle, because I get real sloppy about the macro during battles and on the off chance that I do remember to macro, I'll probably wind up accidentally rallying across the map and losing those units or something else stupid.
I'd recommend for a newer player to queue up no higher than the next single slot up. But for bronze and silver players who aren't completely on the ball just yet, they'll find that what they thought was just a second or two gap between each SCV or marine built will start turning into a 5-10 worker advantage or a 20 food army advantage, compared to their same play, but with no queueing.
Queueing all the way to five will teach bad habits, of course, but so will not queuing. Everyone knows one base logic. You can pump out of four warps, three rax and upgrades, you can get this or that as zerg. Now say you're macroing out of three bases, you have a ton of money and no idea what you can afford because you've teched past the first ten minutes of the game. Your money is high, which brings about the illusion that you can actually afford more production buildings than you should technically be able to.
Now later on, you get to plat or diamond and find that more and more often, you won't be able to produce out of as many structures that you used to be able to handle, simply because your mechanics are getting better.
So what's the solution? Build less structures. Similarly, if you decided to queue, then as your mechanics get better, you'll simply queue less.
TL;DR - As long as you're constantly improving, then both queueing and throwing down excess production structures are lower-league quick-fix solutions to help you pump more units out. I don't mind either, but the eventual goal is to get better and better at macro.
On December 15 2010 20:20 Kyuki wrote: 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.
It's different because the actual process of macroing is different. You go through each building separately in SC1 and spread manually. In SC2 the spreading is done for you automatically. You can't start queuing until something is building everywhere already. In SC1 it happens all too easy.
If you check your barracks late game and see and empty queue, you have lost more than when you see a full queue: production time that you cannot get back. If I see a queue longer than 4 (or 5 with reactor) , I know I need more barracks, and I can afford more barracks. Worst case is, I have to press cancel 3 times to get the money, but I never have lost any production time.
Because building a barracks s not only an investment in resources, but also in time. And queue length is a good indicator for when it becomes worth it.
If you already have 6 rax (or 3 with reactor), in the time you build one more, those six racks use 900 minerals to produce marines.
On December 15 2010 21:16 andrewwiggin wrote: LOL.
Everyone who thinks its about the minerals etc - you're missing the point.
Imagine manually working through all the macro perfectly at all of its cycles. That means building at exactly the right time, building units and upgrades at exactly the right time. It's near impossible.
Except, queuing lets you do EXACTLY that.
When you queue, you're paying for the computer to use its perfect APM to make stuff for you exactly when other stuff is finished being made.
P.S - EVEN the pros queue.
You are as wrong as you can get, I've seen pros queueing shit & that is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen.
Please note that it's okay to throw stuff in the queue like 5 seconds before things popout so you can actually profit from the "computer APM". Why is it okay to queue 5 seconds before and not 30 seconds before? You can probably start producing from all your facilities & know how much money is left over to build new stuff/research and actually hit timings. If you use the money to research, build at that point you can't keep producing from everywhere(=often times bad !) so the money is going in your units anyway whereas instead of queuing 30 seconds before you can tech/build then(30seconds before) and have money for a production cycle ready as your units popout.
That's the added value of queuing that everyone's so quick to be blind to. When you're 20 mins into a macro match, you'll understand what I mean.
I don't think that getting stuff out at perfect time is important to anyone but zerg, and zerg can't queue. If you are 20 mins into a macro game and have money, I think it's better to use the money to expand or build more production. Getting 15 marines out per cycle a minute from now is better than getting 12 out at the perfect time.
I tend to queue alot above 140+ food. My biggest issue right now is my apm is hovering around 70 so I am spending more time working on positioning of the army, moving up reinforcements, keep control then i am on spamming my production hotkeys.
It's so easy to produce out of 6 barracks by queuing. What's an extra 300 minerals or so when I am on 3 bases. Even if I build the extra 2 barracks, what's the point if im not using them all the time? Personally it seems smarter to keep your army high, than worry about queueing. Once your apm increases you won't need to queue as much because you are managing the game better.
I disagree. It's much better to lose your first 300 games and develop a really good habit, than winning a bunch, but never progressing too far because you got too reliant on queueing. As a rule, I would try to never build more than 2 marines at a time in the same rax. Queueing shit like thors and collossi...big nono.
@andrewwiggin: You're just plain wrong...there's plenty of pro's, and plenty of people on this forum who are completely capable of keeping up on macro throughout an entire game without queueing to a detremental degree....and if they didn't rely on their good macro & their ability to build units on time instead of queueing they would be far worse players. Plain and simple.
On December 15 2010 21:50 Panoptic wrote: I disagree. It's much better to lose your first 300 games and develop a really good habit, than winning a bunch, but never progressing too far because you got too reliant on queueing. As a rule, I would try to never build more than 2 marines at a time in the same rax. Queueing shit like thors and collossi...big nono.
That's the big issue. People focus too much on winning now and too little on improving. Queuing is bad. It's that simple.
I'd seen Bisu vs Canata before Day9, but during one of his dailies he pointed the viewers to this VOD. In it, Bisu just macros and destroys Canata. Back then, with a poorer macro mechanic game-side, you had to save a screen location because you couldn't control group multiple buildings. Bisu still managed to produce like a madman though.
IMO this shows the power of proper macro. Notice how fast Bisu expands. Notice how he never has units queued. Notice how he actually neglects to micro in favor of producing more units. Notice how he owns.
Best Reason not to queue: The money you bury in queue you could use to make barracks. Once you make more barracks you get a much better feel for what you can afford given your econ (ie on 1 base I dont spend and make 6 raxs then I realize I can't afford to build off 6 rax when I'm actually spending). I builds good habbits down the board to make buildings vs queued units.
On December 15 2010 20:20 Kyuki wrote: 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.
It's different because the actual process of macroing is different. You go through each building separately in SC1 and spread manually. In SC2 the spreading is done for you automatically. You can't start queuing until something is building everywhere already. In SC1 it happens all too easy.
If you check your barracks late game and see and empty queue, you have lost more than when you see a full queue: production time that you cannot get back. If I see a queue longer than 4 (or 5 with reactor) , I know I need more barracks, and I can afford more barracks. Worst case is, I have to press cancel 3 times to get the money, but I never have lost any production time.
Because building a barracks s not only an investment in resources, but also in time. And queue length is a good indicator for when it becomes worth it.
If you already have 6 rax (or 3 with reactor), in the time you build one more, those six racks use 900 minerals to produce marines.
No no, you dont understand. What you're saying is this: "If you're bad at SC1 queing up can screw you over more than in SC2, due to how you will always build out of each building" Which is true ofc, but that doesnt change the fact that when you sit on too much money and que shit on your barracks, be it SC1 or SC2, you are either A) Not spending your money when you should've throughout the game or B) have too few production facilities. Meaning, if you fuck up and QUE before you have started to produce out of all your buildings in SC1, but still have had good macro up to the point that you atleast can spend the money on units and facilities, you get punished. Yes SC1 is harder.
Under the same circumstances in SC2, you would not have a idle barracks = No queing because you cant (Unless you've qued up too many SCVs..). But you would still be out of money and you would not have qued. Conclusion is rather: If you have enough money to que weather it is in SC1 or SC2, and do it, you've been doing something wrong.
Everyone here who says that they que up when it's alot of stuff going on during battles should look at why they CAN que at all to begin with... Spending 900 minerals and having 900 to put into qued units is bad because you had bad macro to begin with. Those minerals should've been spent already.
MONEY SPENT ON QUEING SHOULD'VE BEEN MONEY ALREADY INVESTED INTO ARMY/TECH/EXP -> QUEING IS BAD.
Other problem with queueing is that you could use that money just to blind expo\get upgrades etc etc. If you've got money to dump might as well be proactive with it rather than putting it in a vacuum.
It just teaches bad habits in general, and TBH if you have money to dump really making random expos, getting upgrades etc is a better use even if they don't work out then just queueing up 30 units in 3 rax. You've already massed the money and got behind, might as well try to make it into a positive.
People keep using the extreme example of having all 5 slots queued which I think almost everyone can agree is bad. It seems most of the arguments for queuing in this thread is about queuing 1 or 2 slots so the structures are always producing, while you are managing the other aspects of game play (teching, expanding, army movement/positioning, etc).
Queueing good: When you're in an intense micro situation and might not be able to build on time
Queueing bad: When you have 800 minerals sitting in the bank and just double up all your production buildings. Get a tech building. Get an expo. Get an upgrade. Queueing teaches bad habits and makes you forget to do stuff like that.
On December 15 2010 21:03 Scaryman wrote: bad habits are hard to break. Cutting corners now just means more work later.
This. If you start playing tennis without proper technique, you'll have a hard time learning it "for real". If you get used to queueing stuff, then you might even "damage" your muscle-memory, because you will at some point start pressing the hotkeys automaticly. At this point you are in trouble, because you hate to actively pay attention to NOT queue, to "unlearn" the bad stuff.
It's the same with ppl playing with bad hotkey settings (99% is "what makes you feel good" but 1% is just plain stupid).
Also your whole gamesense would be off, you would never get rich, but still get overwhelmed by better opponents. How the hell are you supposed to improve your play from those games, you would never know if you lost due to tactical mistakes or due to bad macro. For newbs yes, it might give them more wins if they queue up at first. But that's the same with 4-gating, what gives you easy wins doesn't necessarily help you improve your game.
On December 15 2010 22:03 Kyuki wrote: MONEY SPENT ON QUEING SHOULD'VE BEEN MONEY ALREADY INVESTED INTO ARMY/TECH/EXP -> QUEING IS BAD.
Except when you couldn't have spent it, because shit was happening, which happens all the time in a match. Yes, economy is important, arguably even the most important thing in the game. But it's not the only important thing in the game.
The argument is kinda a red herring. Because when you play a game, you already know how many producing structures you need per base, you don't go into the game without a plan. And until you have what you want in buildings, you won't start queuing anyway, because hey, a building is missing.
Actually it's the opposite: if you have all the buildings you want, and the money is still high, it means you have missed production cycles. If you then start building more producing structures, that might still help you to win in the short run, but this is a bad workaround to to cover up for bad macro and not knowing what you are doing.
Only if you approach 200 food and the money starts piling you should build more unit producing structure than you can support on your bases. Before that, every unit producing structure you have more, eats into your army.
Constantly tapping and checking is the nervous habit that becomes necessary, if you don't know what you are doing, or are still trying to figure out what to do. Just like people that don't know how to tie their shoelaces always have to check on their shoes.
Oh god... You keep insisting on your logic, when it falls flat on the fact that You cannot have excessive minerals to put into Queing if you macro perfectly.
You're saying that it's a good idea to que up BEFORE the battle because during the battle when you need to focus on micro and position, you wont miss a macro beat because the computer is doing it for you, and that is impossible unless you have excess minerals already and that is a indicator that your macro has slipped (or was just bad due to queing(?)...) even before the point you start to que up.
There is a ton of shit that can happen in a game of SC2 that makes your money go high, usually it's something like harass, unless you're just bad, and making more production facilities to catch up in supply or getting more upgrades or more tech, right now, can be the difference between a won and a lost game if the money is already banked. If you just que up in belief that your money will drop eventually because "I have X SCVs and Y Production facilities on Z Bases and that is the only thing I can support!", you will loose to timing pushes. Weather you put excessive minerals/gas into more production or tech/upgrades/Expansions, it will always be better than queing.
The game is not streamlined either. You dont suddenly have full saturation on a new base when you make it, and you dont have all the facilities that you can support when it's up etc, and how you actually get to a point in the game can vary alot. If you just strictly keep to what you mathematically think is correct and neglect the ordering things need to be done in and consider whatever happens to you DURING the game you will just always be a none adaptive player that will be put behind very easily by your opponent.
The only bad coverup/workaround for bad macro is queing. If you had bad macro during a game you had bad macro during that game. Nothing will change that fact. You can only look at the problem and fix it in a new game. What you do in the game that you are in, is to adapt and SPEND THE BLOODY MONEY. If you loose with 3k in the bank, you know that those money never got spent and could've been made into whatever, regardless if you think that it would've panned out 5 minutes later.
I admit! Despite being 2200 diamond I often queue up my probes when taking my 4th. Since I'm not certain I will take a 4th every game, I don't supersaturate ahead of time so there is no probe transfer to do. Instead I select all 4 nexi (thank you MBS!) and just spam E a couple of times. I then chrono each nexus. I try not to queue up more than 2 at a time though... The reason is that probes only have 17 second build tiems and if you chrono them... well... I just don't have the APM not to queue in this situation!
But beyond that, queuing is bad. I play protoss and generally do not use robotics units in any MU (except observers), so I CAN'T queue... warpgates just don't work that way. And heck, it's made me a lot better by forcing me not to queue.
On December 15 2010 23:51 Kyuki wrote: Oh god... You keep insisting on your logic, when it falls flat on the fact that You cannot have excessive minerals to put into Queing if you macro perfectly.
That's the same as insisting that you can't lose units, if you micro perfectly.
On December 15 2010 23:51 Kyuki wrote: You're saying that it's a good idea to que up BEFORE the battle because during the battle when you need to focus on micro and position, you wont miss a macro beat because the computer is doing it for you, and that is impossible unless you have excess minerals already and that is a indicator that your macro has slipped (or was just bad due to queing(?)...) even before the point you start to que up.
Because unit structures or supply depots never get destroyed, or you never needed to buy gas heavy stuff in reaction to something your opponent did. You never can spend both resource types equally well unless you are also willing to have idle structures, or constantly shift workers between gas and minerals with perfect foresight.
On December 15 2010 23:51 Kyuki wrote: Weather you put excessive minerals/gas into more production or tech/upgrades/Expansions, it will always be better than queing.
That's money that you never can get back if something, say, unpredictable happens, and then you have idle useless buildings that don't do anything. Queues can always be canceled.
A queued unit is only idle until the preceding unit is built. An excess building is idle most the time for the rest of thegame. Building excess production structures is the same as expecting and counting on to continue to macro badly.
Queueing in late game is as bad as it is in early and mid game, you are just hiding your money. Arguing that it is harder to macro properly with more going on is only ok if you feel that you do not need to improve any more and the sloppy late game you are playing is fine. In any other case, optimised spending is better than hiding your money by queueing units.
Yes, real game is always different than theory. Yes, the pros get behind on macro as well. This does not make queueing good. It is always better to invest the piled up money in new tech, more unit producing facilities or more bases than it is to hide it by queueing. In the first scenario you are trying to catch up and win the game by not doing more macro mistakes. In the second scenario you are taking a defeated stance and just accepting that your macro is bad. In other words, you are not trying to improve it.
If you want to be able to be more reactionary, you should be building additional hatcheries (saving larva) or additional warpgates. Then you can let your money run a bit high and instantly spend it when you decide what units you need. This is better than queuing colossus or whatever.
On December 16 2010 00:14 malthias wrote: In the first scenario you are trying to catch up and win the game by not doing more macro mistakes. In the second scenario you are taking a defeated stance and just accepting that your macro is bad.
See above. An excess production facility means you are counting on having more bad macro for the rest of the game, because either it's idle, which is bad, or you can feed it, which means you have let your money run high.
No. Having more production facilities means you can play a more reactionary game, making your arsenal of available tactics bigger, and it means that you can use them once you get more income or once you pile some money after getting to 200/200 and then exchange your armies. If your macro slips again, yes, you can use them to catch up as well, but it is not the reason for building them.
Queueing units in contrast is just going to hide your money and if your macro slips again you are just going to hide even more money by making the queue bigger (yes - you can still slip even if you queue, supply block being a simple example).
Again, it is always better to build more bases, unit producing structures or tech than it is to queue. This is a fact that SC1 has proven over the 12 years of its existence and SC2 is proving all the time.
On December 16 2010 00:22 farseerdk wrote: If you want to be able to be more reactionary, you should be building additional hatcheries (saving larva) or additional warpgates. Then you can let your money run a bit high and instantly spend it when you decide what units you need. This is better than queuing colossus or whatever.
That's comparing apples and oranges. Because warpgates and larva are not queued sequences, but parallel. You need to let your money run high a little, and also have a few excess facilites to use it to best effect in reaction to what is happening, or to get all the units at once once a tech structure finishes. You can decide whether you need a sentry or a zealot or a templar in the next 5 seconds at a specific location at the map. You can save up money and gas, make drones for as long as your minerals exceed your gas and then build 10 mutas at once. With marines all you know is, you wanna have a lot of marines in the next few minutes.
On December 15 2010 23:51 Kyuki wrote: Oh god... You keep insisting on your logic, when it falls flat on the fact that You cannot have excessive minerals to put into Queing if you macro perfectly.
Do you macro perfectly?
Who macros perfectly?
Hell, even IdrA's queen has 25-40 energy at the end of a match, no one macros perfectly. I bet Idra would dream he could queue inject larva up.
On December 16 2010 00:35 malthias wrote: Queueing units in contrast is just going to hide your money and if your macro slips again you are just going to hide even more money by making the queue bigger (yes - you can still slip even if you queue, supply block being a simple example).
No, it's not to dump minerals away, it's to take no chances and eliminate the possibility that they might be idling.
When your money is high enough to allow for you to queue, you've either not built enough facilities, or you've had them idling at some point, the latter is far more likely and it happens if you don't queue, and you want to stop them from happening.
Also, the combo 'queueing up but establishing mental awareness for yourself to cancel right away if you need to' is far more powerful than 'establishing a mental clock to keep going back every right unit of time', you sometimes end up in a nasty micro situation and simply can't do the latter.
For myself, I queue and often end up doing things like sending a probe out on 10 minerals, while it travels dequeue a zealot, build a gateway when it gets there and have 170 minerals, and a moment later requeue the zealot. This is because I've trained an awareness of knowing how much I've queued up in 'virtual money', it's a deposit I can always claim back, and it stops me from having idle production structures.
In my opinion, not queuing at all may not be the optimal way of playing. This is because no one macros absolutely perfectly and having those units constantly building whilst in the middle of a big battle may be beneficial.
I also think that in the endgame, when the armies approach 200/200, it is also nice to have some reserve money in case of emergencies. Thus, queuing may be appropriate there.
However, in the early game, I would say that queuing would not be ideal, and it'll be better for people to get good habits learnt as early as possible even if it initially leads to worser results.
In summation: My opinion is that the "badness" of queuing diminishes as the game progresses and in some cases, it may be the better solution instead of building more structures. Also, since no one can macro perfectly, it will be better to queue as well.
On December 16 2010 00:36 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: No, it's not to dump minerals away, it's to take no chances and eliminate the possibility that they might be idling.
Exactly as I said before - you are investing money to cover your anticipated bad macro rather than trying to improve your macro and investing your money in something that can actually give you an advantage in the game.
On December 16 2010 00:49 Azzur wrote: In my opinion, not queuing at all may not be the optimal way of playing. This is because no one macros absolutely perfectly and having those units constantly building whilst in the middle of a big battle may be beneficial.
I also think that in the endgame, when the armies approach 200/200, it is also nice to have some reserve money in case of emergencies. Thus, queuing may be appropriate there.
However, in the early game, I would say that queuing would not be ideal, and it'll be better for people to get good habits learnt as early as possible even if it initially leads to worser results.
In summation: My opinion is that the "badness" of queuing diminishes as the game progresses and in some cases, it may be the better solution instead of building more structures. Also, since no one can macro perfectly, it will be better to queue as well.
Do you know why terran late game is weaker than protoss or zerg? Because their replacement rate is crappy.
Protoss can just spam warpgates while banking on a 200/200 army. The armies fight, and Terran needs to cue. Protoss? w,z,z,z,z,z,z,t,t,t,t,t,s,s,s,s,s Zerg? <hatchery hotkey>, s,h,h,h,h,h,h,r,r,r,r,r,r,r,r,r,r,r,r,r,z,z,z,z
If your money is running high in a 200/200 situation (as it should), you should be increasing the number of production facilities you have, even beyond the point where you could support them purely on income. This is even more important for terran because their untis have longer build times (ok except marines lol)
Queing isn't spending your money. It doesn't help you AT ALL. You might as well have just kept the money in the bank, you are absolutely wrong in saying it's better to queue than have high money. The two are one in the exact same.
On December 16 2010 00:55 farseerdk wrote: Do you know why terran late game is weaker than protoss or zerg? Because their replacement rate is crappy.
Protoss can just spam warpgates while banking on a 200/200 army. The armies fight, and Terran needs to cue. Protoss? w,z,z,z,z,z,z,t,t,t,t,t,s,s,s,s,s Zerg? <hatchery hotkey>, s,h,h,h,h,h,h,r,r,r,r,r,r,r,r,r,r,r,r,r,z,z,z,z
If your money is running high in a 200/200 situation (as it should), you should be increasing the number of production facilities you have, even beyond the point where you could support them purely on income. This is even more important for terran because their untis have longer build times (ok except marines lol)
Terran have just as many unit producing structure as Protoss most of the time. Protoss units have just as long a cooldown as yours do production time, it is just different, not superior. Same with Zerg -- getting the larva takes time, and making the unit still takes time, only difference is we can stockpile larva. If they were able to save that many larva you could have made that many units by then. A hatch and a Queen is quite significantly less production than a CC and 3 barracks. Not to mention the obvious fact that a 200/200 T army smashes the shit out of Z's. Stop making excuses for the poor macro of most Terrans right now. They can reinforce almost as well (and if they could reinforce exactly as well they'd be even more OP than they are, that is Zerg's ONLY strength in the entire game)
On December 16 2010 00:36 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: No, it's not to dump minerals away, it's to take no chances and eliminate the possibility that they might be idling.
Exactly as I said before - you are investing money to cover your anticipated bad macro rather than trying to improve your macro and investing your money in something that can actually give you an advantage in the game.
What you're not getting is that there are times when stopping to macro at all - even for a couple seconds of hotkey mashing - will COST YOU THE GAME. An important improvement to your game is to develop a sense of when those situations are coming, then suck it up and queue. Call it "bad macro" all you want, but it's something you have to live with when tasks that are more important than macro come up and require your complete attention.
On December 16 2010 00:35 malthias wrote: No. Having more production facilities means you can either play a more reactionary game, making your arsenal of available tactics bigger, and it means that you can use them once you get more income or once you pile some money after getting to 200/200 and then exchange your armies. If your macro slips again, yes, you can use them to catch up as well, but it is not the reason for building them.
Queueing units in contrast is just going to hide your money and if your macro slips again you are just going to hide even more money by making the queue bigger (yes - you can still slip even if you queue, supply block being a simple example).
Again, it is always better to build more bases, unit producing structures or tech than it is to queue. This is a fact that SC1 has proven over the 12 years of its existence and SC2 is proving all the time.
Once you are maxed, yes, you need excess production capacity to remax quickly. But even there there is a point where it becomes too much, and it starts eating into your army. Because being able to rebuild 50 marines in one cycle is not much good if you can't afford a second cycle ...
Before max it is just more pronounced, because every rax you build beyond supported by your income, is army you can't build if your income drops or can't rise for whatever reason, like containment, being mined out, not being able to expand, being harassed ...
Yes, more bases and more income are always better. But those don't come neither free no easy. You have to fight for them and earn them, and then you need to wait a little and invest until the returns kick in. It's the same with production facilities and tech, just on a smaller scale.
On December 16 2010 00:36 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: No, it's not to dump minerals away, it's to take no chances and eliminate the possibility that they might be idling.
Exactly as I said before - you are investing money to cover your anticipated bad macro rather than trying to improve your macro and investing your money in something that can actually give you an advantage in the game.
Well, newsflash, no one has perfect macro and anticipating imperfect (what you call bad) macro and spending money on that is simply realism.
If you're not willing to temporarily spend some money as an investment because you don't expect your macro to slip at some point or you expect to one day become so godlike that you won't ever have idling production structures again, that's called overconfidence.
The amount of excess money you have is directly caused by idling production buildings, and thus the amount of units you can queue at any time, the problem solves itself basically.
Not anticipating that your macro is 'bad' and unwilling to invest some money (that you can reclaim at any time anyway) to cover that up is just a bad game decision, expect to make faults, because you will make faults. Inject larva can't be queued, and even people like Idra with the best mechanics on the planet end up having accumulated enough energy on them at the end of a game to do a double injection cycle in the end.
On December 16 2010 01:00 telfire wrote: Queing isn't spending your money. It doesn't help you AT ALL. You might as well have just kept the money in the bank, you are absolutely wrong in saying it's better to queue than have high money. The two are one in the exact same.
Something I briefly mentioned above ... All this only applies if you macro perfectly all the time. Which is impossible. Just as impossible as microing perfectly all the time and never losing units. But for some strange reason losing units, even dozens of marines at once, is less frowned upon than queuing a few ...
On December 16 2010 01:00 telfire wrote: Queing isn't spending your money. It doesn't help you AT ALL. You might as well have just kept the money in the bank, you are absolutely wrong in saying it's better to queue than have high money. The two are one in the exact same.
Something I briefly mentioned above ... All this only applies if you macro perfectly all the time. Which is impossible. Just as impossible as microing perfectly all the time and never losing units. But for some strange reason losing units, even dozens of marines at once, is less frowned upon than queuing a few ...
It's all tradeoffs ...
Switch to protoss for a bit.
Use only warpgate units.
You WILL NOT be able to queue.
Fight your way back up to your current ranking.
Then switch back to terran.
Gasp at your improvement.
edit: could also do this with zerg, but zerg is harder to switch to as it's the race with the most different mechanics.
On December 16 2010 01:05 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: Not anticipating that your macro is 'bad' and unwilling to invest some money (that you can reclaim at any time anyway) to cover that up is just a bad game decision, expect to make faults, because you will make faults. Inject larva can't be queued, and even people like Idra with the best mechanics on the planet end up having accumulated enough energy on them at the end of a game to do a double injection cycle in the end.
Dude no. It's not good at all. It never helps you at all. It is strictly a waste of money to queue. There is no argument to the contrary. Your argument is completely and utterly nonsensical. THERE IS ZERO BENEFIT TO IT. It hurts you very bad.
If you can't constantly produce units, and you really want a short-term solution that will teach you very very bad habits, then a better option is to make more unit producing structures so you can spend your money faster. Queuing is completely pointless, stupid, and dumb. No one here and pointed out a SINGLE benefit it can have over any other purpose you could use that money for. That's because there are none.
Queuing is bad, period. It is EXACTLY THE SAME as not spending your money in every single way.
And no one has "perfect" macro but if you are gaining more than like a few hundred extra minerals then your macro IS BAD, not "imperfect". Doesn't make you a bad person, we all start somewhere, but stop making excuses for poor play.
On December 16 2010 01:00 imbecile wrote: Once you are maxed, yes, you need excess production capacity to remax quickly. But even there there is a point where it becomes too much, and it starts eating into your army. Because being able to rebuild 50 marines in one cycle is not much good if you can't afford a second cycle ...
Before max it is just more pronounced, because every rax you build beyond supported by your income, is army you can't build if your income drops or can't rise for whatever reason, like containment, being mined out, not being able to expand, being harassed ...
Yes, more bases and more income are always better. But those don't come neither free no easy. You have to fight for them and earn them, and then you need to wait a little and invest until the returns kick in. It's the same with production facilities and tech, just on a smaller scale.
And what does that prove? It definitely does not prove that queueing is better than either of these responses to your previous bad macro (we assume that if you have spare money to queue, your macro must have slipped already). You basically agreed that the responses everyone here is trying to suggest to you may get you some good return on investment, but they have their risks.
Queueing is never going to give you a return on your investment, it is only going to hide your money. The only situation when it may give you some benefit is if you slip again, which you should not plan for if you try to improve. If you just want to win then even then additional production facilities are going to cover it as well in addition to all the other benefits they give.
This thread is proof that people don't read. Thanks for all your insightful posts about how queuing is just hiding your money, wow we sure didn't know that.
This thread is about how it's better to queue than it is to float at lower levels of play. Seriously, did you guys read the OP at all?
And how is it different? If you que, you're bad and you wont improve. If you play this game you'd want to atleast improve somewhat, and if you dont then whatever, why make a topic?
On December 16 2010 01:15 dcberkeley wrote: This thread is proof that people don't read. Thanks for all your insightful posts about how queuing is just hiding your money, wow we sure didn't know that.
This thread is about how it's better to queue than it is to float at lower levels of play. Seriously, did you guys read the OP at all?
It isn't better. It's the exact same. People are talking about other things to do with excess minerals caused by poor play, because both floating and queuing are purely, irredeemably bad.
On December 16 2010 01:00 telfire wrote: Queing isn't spending your money. It doesn't help you AT ALL. You might as well have just kept the money in the bank, you are absolutely wrong in saying it's better to queue than have high money. The two are one in the exact same.
Something I briefly mentioned above ... All this only applies if you macro perfectly all the time. Which is impossible. Just as impossible as microing perfectly all the time and never losing units. But for some strange reason losing units, even dozens of marines at once, is less frowned upon than queuing a few ...
It's all tradeoffs ...
Switch to protoss for a bit.
Use only warpgate units.
You WILL NOT be able to queue.
Fight your way back up to your current ranking.
Then switch back to terran.
Gasp at your improvement.
edit: could also do this with zerg, but zerg is harder to switch to as it's the race with the most different mechanics.
Yeah, if you've fought yourself back with only gateway units... let's take on them roach-hydra and MMMG balls with only gateway units. I'm sure you're a lot better if you're able to do this yeah.
Also, there's a 10 second less cooldown on warp gates, now, do you think blizzard did this to make warp gates that much better to gateways besides already being able to re-enforce all over the map. Or is this because blizzard expects players to have an average 10 second idle time on them when they can't queue or use hotkeys to spam units?
On December 16 2010 01:05 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: Not anticipating that your macro is 'bad' and unwilling to invest some money (that you can reclaim at any time anyway) to cover that up is just a bad game decision, expect to make faults, because you will make faults. Inject larva can't be queued, and even people like Idra with the best mechanics on the planet end up having accumulated enough energy on them at the end of a game to do a double injection cycle in the end.
Dude no. It's not good at all. It never helps you at all. It is strictly a waste of money to queue. There is no argument to the contrary. Your argument is completely and utterly nonsensical. THERE IS ZERO BENEFIT TO IT. It hurts you very bad.
You never have idling production facilities? Gee, zero benefit.
If you can't constantly produce units
Then you're human.
and you really want a short-term solution that will teach you very very bad habits, then a better option is to make more unit producing structures so you can spend your money faster.
And why is that a better solution?
Queuing is completely pointless, stupid, and dumb. No one here and pointed out a SINGLE benefit it can have over any other purpose you could use that money for. That's because there are none.
Everyone pointed out that you have no idling production facilities anymore.
Queuing is bad, period. It is EXACTLY THE SAME as not spending your money in every single way.
Again, it's not about dumping money, it's about making a one time investment at some point to ensure that you will not have idling production facilities for the rest of the match.
Just remember that if you queue up 8 marines, that's 400 minerals, you don't lose 400 minerals each time, you only lose it once because you keep running ahead. You invest 400 minerals (which you can guaranteed always get back if you so need, you just have to invest it again then) to never ever have idling production facilities. It's a bargain. You make a 400 mineral deposit to be guaranteed to never have idle production facilities. And you can get those 400 minerals back if you cancel, but you have to re-deposit it to get that guarantee.
And no one has "perfect" macro but if you are gaining more than like a few hundred extra minerals then your macro IS BAD, not "imperfect". Doesn't make you a bad person, we all start somewhere, but stop making excuses for poor play.
How am I making 'excuses'? I'm saying that we all have this problem and that we can't deny or avoid it. You're acting as if it doesn't exist and you can supposedly train yourself to have perfect macro.
Basically, there are two ways to get your production facilities always running:
1: Jumping back at the right time each time, having a perfect internal clock. 2: Queuing up some stuff.
The first thing is maybe the most ideal thing if you can reach it, but you will never be able to reach it. And you have idle time when you slip on this one only slightly in mechanics.
It's like making only one phoenix against 80 mutalisks and saying 'Making more phoenix is just an excuse for bad micro and a bad habit', yeah, you only need one phoenix to take on 80 mutalisks with perfect play and assuming you're not going to make mistakes, the rest is wasted resources that can be used on something else. But you just can't expect yourself to have such perfect micro.
I'm surprised there's so much negativity towards queueing. Those who argue that it is never good, may I ask what level you play(ed) at in SC2/BW? I find it quite beneficial at high level and never find it bottlenecking my play. I rarely queue more than one unit, but that one production round is often quite worth it.
I actually don't think queuing up a second unit is really that bad at all from the midgame -> lategame. There's a problem in people who are bad at macro making TOO MANY production facilities too, which I see way too often in other players like making 6rax off of one base or something. You end up spending money on these facilities that can only be used for like 2-3 cycles due to your money build up but afterwards you'll never be able to use them until your macro slips again. Obviously you should never queue up units in the early game but once it hits past the midgame phase then queuing up to the second cycle isn't that big of a deal and it's actually not a bad idea to do so.
On December 16 2010 01:25 Pokebunny wrote: I'm surprised there's so much negativity towards queueing. Those who argue that it is never good, may I ask what level you play(ed) at in SC2/BW? I find it quite beneficial at high level and never find it bottlenecking my play. I rarely queue more than one unit, but that one production round is often quite worth it.
I'm 2k+ diamond, but I play way too little since I chopped my pointyfinger... I'd consider myself around 2500+. That's a friggin moot point though.
I ask you instead, is it not better to try to play as optimally as possible to both explore new possibilities with the minerals/gas you ACTUALLY have rather than be stagnant in your skillprogression because you're into a rather bad habbits that lets you win games on the ladder, which is full of incompetent and undeveloped players at all levels?
On December 16 2010 01:13 malthias wrote: ... (we assume that if you have spare money to queue, your macro must have slipped already) ...
That's a correct assumption, and I don't argue with that. The point is, it's inevitable at every level of the game. Happens less at the higher levels, but still happens. And just building more unit producing structures is not always the right response, because until that kicks in takes the time and resources to build that production facility + the resources and time to build 2-3 cycles. If that facility later stays idle for that long, it was a bad investment, period. And if you are losing units faster than you can produce them, then the problem might not only lay with your lack of production facilities, but also with where you chose to pay your attention.
No it wasnt, it was probably a investment that kept you alive and helped you learn to adapt. Something to bring on to the next game where you try not to slip your macro up again.
Because making extra unit-producing structures has at least some tangible benefit. You get to make more units and actually spend your money. With queuing there is zero benefit whatsoever.
Everyone pointed out that you have no idling production facilities anymore.
What? I never said I was perfect, nor did anyone. Accusing us of being imperfect or even bad, regardless of whether it's true or not, does not help your argument.
Again, it's not about dumping money, it's about making a one time investment at some point to ensure that you will not have idling production facilities for the rest of the match.
If you have idling structures for that long you're a bad player, period. There's no way out of it, there's nothing that fixes it. It's bad bad bad. No ifs ands or buts. You simply are a bad player and you should work on the things that make you a bad player, not trying to find some secret technique that covers up your badness. (Yes I'm a bad player too that doesn't change anything I said)
How am I making 'excuses'? I'm saying that we all have this problem and that we can't deny or avoid it. You're acting as if it doesn't exist and you can supposedly train yourself to have perfect macro.
We do not "all" have this problem. And your solution does not fix the problem in any way. You are completely ignoring the fact that queing does not help you at all. It does not give you an extra unit, it does not spend your money any faster. It does NOTHING for you. If you are in a position where you are even ABLE to queue, then the mistake was already made, and no matter how much you queue you will NEVER cover it up because you already missed the time where you were supposed to be making units. The barracks doesn't move faster because you queue in any way. To get ANYTHING out of that banked money at ALL, you have to make another unit-producing structure (that you would not normally be able to afford)
Basically, there are two ways to get your production facilities always running:
1: Jumping back at the right time each time, having a perfect internal clock. 2: Queuing up some stuff.
The first thing is maybe the most ideal thing if you can reach it, but you will never be able to reach it. And you have idle time when you slip on this one only slightly in mechanics.
You're wrong. Pros reach it all the time and yes it takes practice, but that's how you play this game. Maybe not 100% of the time but close enough that they don't have extra minerals to queue with.
The fact that people are imperfect DOES NOT SUPPORT YOUR ARGUMENT. You keep reiterating the same meaningless things. It doesn't change the fact that YOU ALREADY FORGOT TO MAKE UNITS IF YOU CAN QUEUE. You already made the mistake. Queing doesn't fix it or help it in any way. It gives you an illusion of spending money when really you already forgot to spend your money, that's why you were able to queue in the first place. That money is in the bank permanently until you find a REAL way to spend it, not an imaginary one that only really delays your money further.
Think about it. I have 50 minerals and a Barracks. I forget to make a marine. Now I have 100 minerals by the time I start my first marine. I queue a second marine because I read some dumbass giving stupid advice on TeamLiquid, and guess what? By the time the first marine's done I'm at 100 minerals again! That 50 IS STILL FLOATING AND COMPLETELY UNUSED.
It's like making only one phoenix against 80 mutalisks and saying 'Making more phoenix is just an excuse for bad micro and a bad habit', yeah, you only need one phoenix to take on 80 mutalisks with perfect play and assuming you're not going to make mistakes, the rest is wasted resources that can be used on something else. But you just can't expect yourself to have such perfect micro.
No, because if you did that you would die while you were trying to micro the pheonix even if your micro was perfect. You are wrong to say that one pheonix can take out 80 mutalisks, it's not true because you will die in the mean time, and besides it's a completely different situation. Not to mention you are talking about a level of micro that is completely unachievable by humans, whereas spending your money is very very possible. But what you are saying is that "imagining in your head that you spent your minerals is far better than actually facing the truth that you forgot to spend your minerals" because what you are suggesting has no benefits, and instead of realizing this or trying to come up with some sort of benefit, you just keep insulting everyone by saying it's impossible that they macro perfectly. No shit sherlock, that is irrelevant though.
Bottom line: Try not to miss a production cycle, but if you do end up with a lot of money (and as you continuously point out this is the case for most players), the ONLY way you can ever spend that money is by making additional structures with which to spend it. Queuing is purely an illusion, as your income will still flow while the queued units produce, you are still floating all of that money and it is exactly the same in every possible way as just having it in the top right.
On December 15 2010 23:51 Kyuki wrote: Oh god... You keep insisting on your logic, when it falls flat on the fact that You cannot have excessive minerals to put into Queing if you macro perfectly.
Do you macro perfectly?
Who macros perfectly?
Hell, even IdrA's queen has 25-40 energy at the end of a match, no one macros perfectly. I bet Idra would dream he could queue inject larva up.
wawa What? People dont seem to grasp this. It has absolutly no meaning saying that "no one can play perfect". You would ALWAYS want to strive to do exactly that, to ATLEAST play as optimally as possible, and you will move away from that if you que. You will even miss opportunities to expand and tech during certain timings because you think think that you spend your money properly. This will not allow you to improve as fast as you could. To become a better player, you should try to not que. How can this be hard to grasp? This specially applies to lower level players.
Someone said something about how a micro mistake can cost you a game: Sure not doing micro in a certain situation in favor of macroing as good as possible can loose you games, especially at the very top level, but that's EXACTLY the point. That's where you can improve. If you macro better and eventually micro better and thusly make less mistakes than your opponent, you will eventually have a very high win%.
There's always room for improvements, even for top players.
On December 16 2010 01:00 telfire wrote: Queing isn't spending your money. It doesn't help you AT ALL. You might as well have just kept the money in the bank, you are absolutely wrong in saying it's better to queue than have high money. The two are one in the exact same.
Something I briefly mentioned above ... All this only applies if you macro perfectly all the time. Which is impossible. Just as impossible as microing perfectly all the time and never losing units. But for some strange reason losing units, even dozens of marines at once, is less frowned upon than queuing a few ...
It's all tradeoffs ...
Switch to protoss for a bit.
Use only warpgate units.
You WILL NOT be able to queue.
Fight your way back up to your current ranking.
Then switch back to terran.
Gasp at your improvement.
edit: could also do this with zerg, but zerg is harder to switch to as it's the race with the most different mechanics.
Yeah, if you've fought yourself back with only gateway units... let's take on them roach-hydra and MMMG balls with only gateway units. I'm sure you're a lot better if you're able to do this yeah.
You realize the high templar is a gateway unit, right?.
In any case, I don't use colossus at all in pvt and only about 30% of the time in pvz. If you think gateway units are bad then your knowledge of this game really needs improvement.
On December 16 2010 01:25 Pokebunny wrote: I'm surprised there's so much negativity towards queueing. Those who argue that it is never good, may I ask what level you play(ed) at in SC2/BW? I find it quite beneficial at high level and never find it bottlenecking my play. I rarely queue more than one unit, but that one production round is often quite worth it.
I'm 2k+ diamond, but I play way too little since I chopped my pointyfinger... I'd consider myself around 2500+. That's a friggin moot point though.
I ask you instead, is it not better to try to play as optimally as possible to both explore new possibilities with the minerals/gas you ACTUALLY have rather than be stagnant in your skillprogression because you're into a rather bad habbits that lets you win games on the ladder, which is full of incompetent and undeveloped players at all levels?
To use a BW example, even the best macro progamers queue up units in the latter portions of the game. You have enough income to do so, and in the lategame where there is an extreme amount of multitasking it's better to have constant automatic unit production so that you may have time to pay attention to a multitude of other things. Queuing up one cycle of 6-8 rax is only 300-400 minerals which is really nothing if you haven't been prevented from expanding when you need to. I would actually argue that not queuing when you can without detriments is actually a bad habit when tons of progamers with 300-500apm queue up or miss production cycles once the game starts to get hectic.
Because making extra unit-producing structures has at least some tangible benefit. You get to make more units and actually spend your money. With queuing there is zero benefit whatsoever.
In the lategame having constant unit production is better than making superfluous production facilities that will only see use when your macro slips to hell. An entire cycle of 6-8 rax is 300-400 minerals. If you mistakenly miss a production cycle and make two rax and that's an entire cycles worth of marines that could have just existed on the field if you had queued. Those additional two rax have a sunk cost of 300 minerals and for them to be in use you have to use 100 more minerals every cycle and you'll run out of surplus minerals to power them quickly.
On December 16 2010 01:45 Kyuki wrote: Yes, but if they could they wouldnt. That's the entire argument.
BUT THEY CAN'T and that's the entire argument. If players that spend their entire goddamn lives can't do this magical fantasy world scenario of you deluded people then I'm sure that no one can. These people could theoretically just stare at their barracks for the entire game to have "perfect macro" but they don't because there are obviously more gain in investing a little money so they can do 10x more things in the game and the costs are obviously worth it.
Because making extra unit-producing structures has at least some tangible benefit. You get to make more units and actually spend your money. With queuing there is zero benefit whatsoever.
In the lategame having constant unit production is better than making superfluous production facilities that will only see use when your macro slips to hell. An entire cycle of 6-8 rax is 300-400 minerals. If you mistakenly miss a production cycle and make two rax and that's an entire cycles worth of marines that could have just existed on the field if you had queued. Those additional two rax have a sunk cost of 300 minerals and for them to be in use you have to use 100 more minerals every cycle and you'll run out of surplus minerals to power them quickly.
If you skip a production cycle to make barracks how is that queuing? You're not making any sense. If you're not producing any units, start them up, if you then have new units producing out of all your structures and you still have money (and assuming your UPS to income ratio is correct) then at that point you should build additional barracks because that money will NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER be able to be spent otherwise, period. You will get enough money while those guys are producing to be able to make more anyway. It is permanently lost unless you build some structure to spend it with.
Whoa, at first I thought it said "Queening is bad" and I thought there was some insightful math or theorycrafting about queens being a waste of resources since this is supposed to be a strategy thread, but then I read it again and saw that it basically was saying something that anyone who has ever played an rts would know.
Don't Queue. Profit.
Making the next set of units like 3 seconds before the current set finishes is fine, but anything more than that and you aren't playing efficiently.
On December 16 2010 01:52 darmousseh wrote: Whoa, at first I thought it said "Queening is bad" and I thought there was some insightful math or theorycrafting about queens being a waste of resources since this is supposed to be a strategy thread, but then I read it again and saw that it basically was saying something that anyone who has ever played an rts would know.
Don't Queue. Profit.
Making the next set of units like 3 seconds before the current set finishes is fine, but anything more than that and you aren't playing efficiently.
No dude, he's trying to argue that queuing is good, that's what's so fucked up about it.
Because making extra unit-producing structures has at least some tangible benefit. You get to make more units and actually spend your money. With queuing there is zero benefit whatsoever.
In the lategame having constant unit production is better than making superfluous production facilities that will only see use when your macro slips to hell. An entire cycle of 6-8 rax is 300-400 minerals. If you mistakenly miss a production cycle and make two rax and that's an entire cycles worth of marines that could have just existed on the field if you had queued. Those additional two rax have a sunk cost of 300 minerals and for them to be in use you have to use 100 more minerals every cycle and you'll run out of surplus minerals to power them quickly.
If you skip a production cycle to make barracks how is that queuing? You're not making any sense. If you're not producing any units, queue them up, if you have new units producing out of all your structures and you still have money (and assuming your UPS to income ratio is correct) then at that point you should build additional barracks because that money will NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER be able to be spent otherwise, period. It is permanently lost unless you build some structure to spend it with.
What in the world are you talking about? I said if you mistakenly miss a production cycle and make barracks with the accumulated money. If you fucked up and missed a cycle and made additional production facilities because of the money that stacked up because of your fuck up.
Obviously you need to fucking make the right amount of production facilities according to your economy. The right amount and the right timing is all up to how much you've played and your experiences, and this is why you should not queue up at all in the earlygame (I haven't played or watched SC2 much so I don't know how much it should be for SC2). What I'm saying is that in the lategame AFTER you have the right amount of unit production facilities you should not make more facilities because your economy can't handle it. It would be absolutely superfluous and the gain that you gain from it isn't really gain. Having constant 6-8 production is better than missing a production cycle and making 2 more buildings. In the late game for not only this but other myriad of reasons. Gamers that spend their entire lives playing this game and have 300-500apm queue up slightly in the lategame or miss their cycles for a reason.
Essentially, if you have 4 marines queued, you could have made one marine and also built a barracks. There should be no opportunity to queue, and if there is: build another unit producing structure.
On December 16 2010 01:38 Kyuki wrote: No it wasnt, it was probably a investment that kept you alive and helped you learn to adapt. Something to bring on to the next game where you try not to slip your macro up again.
Since there are no players who do not slip on the entire planet, empirical evidence fails to show that this can stop you from slipping ever.
I purely see this as playing it safe and building in a margin of error for myself, it's like building a house an ordering only exactly how many bricks you calculated you needed for it. Sure, it's the most cost efficient way provided you never ever break a brick. But a good constructor will build in a margin of error for himself and order some bricks more, because he knows it's likely that he will make mistakes.
I build in a margin of error, you can't anticipate it all, it could happen that you're suddenly surprised by a very macro-intensive battle, and at that point I'm glad I queued up and didn't idle during that, which I would have if I didn't queue.
If you have idling structures for that long you're a bad player, period. There's no way out of it, there's nothing that fixes it. It's bad bad bad. No ifs ands or buts. You simply are a bad player and you should work on the things that make you a bad player, not trying to find some secret technique that covers up your badness. (Yes I'm a bad player too that doesn't change anything I said)
everyone is a bad player then, depending on what you feel is 'that long'.
We do not "all" have this problem. And your solution does not fix the problem in any way. You are completely ignoring the fact that queing does not help you at all. It does not give you an extra unit, it does not spend your money any faster. It does NOTHING for you. If you are in a position where you are even ABLE to queue, then the mistake was already made, and no matter how much you queue you will NEVER cover it up because you already missed the time where you were supposed to be making units. The barracks doesn't move faster because you queue in any way. To get ANYTHING out of that banked money at ALL, you have to make another unit-producing structure (that you would not normally be able to afford)
Yeah, if you assume that you're going to be perfect from that moment on. But that'snot going to happen, you've had idle time in the past without queuing, and you're going to have idle time in the future again if you don't queue.
There will be a point in the future again where you get tied up and have idle time, and if you had queued then your baracks will produce faster at that point.
You're wrong. Pros reach it all the time and yes it takes practice, but that's how you play this game. Maybe not 100% of the time but close enough that they don't have extra minerals to queue with.
You're out of your mind. Even pros at various points have in the 1k minerals before being maxed in the late-game.
Like I said, look at Idra's queens, you can't queue them, and they have 40 energy at the end of a match at some points.
The fact that people are imperfect DOES NOT SUPPORT YOUR ARGUMENT. You keep reiterating the same meaningless things. It doesn't change the fact that YOU ALREADY FORGOT TO MAKE UNITS IF YOU CAN QUEUE. You already made the mistake. Queing doesn't fix it or help it in any way. It gives you an illusion of spending money when really you already forgot to spend your money, that's why you were able to queue in the first place. That money is in the bank permanently until you find a REAL way to spend it, not an imaginary one that only really delays your money further.
No, it doesn't fix that mistake no, but it negates future mistakes of the same kind..
Also, if you had queued up before that time, you wouldn't have had idle time the first time.
Think about it. I have 50 minerals and a Barracks. I forget to make a marine. Now I have 100 minerals by the time I start my first marine. I queue a second marine because I read some dumbass giving stupid advice on TeamLiquid, and guess what? By the time the first marine's done I'm at 100 minerals again! That 50 IS STILL FLOATING AND COMPLETELY UNUSED.
Yes, And the next time you would have idled because your macro slips, you'll be back at 50 again and you have produced that marine instead of idling the baracks. =/
The mistake will happen again, and again, and again, get used to it.
Kyuki wawa What? People dont seem to grasp this. It has absolutly no meaning saying that "no one can play perfect". You would ALWAYS want to strive to do exactly that, to ATLEAST play as optimally as possible, and you will move away from that if you que. You will even miss opportunities to expand and tech during certain timings because you think think that you spend your money properly. This will not allow you to improve as fast as you could. To become a better player, you should try to not que. How can this be hard to grasp? This specially applies to lower level players.
There is a difference between trying to play optimally, and basing your strategy on the assumption that you will play optimally.
Not queuing is making the assumption that in the future, your macro will never ever slip. I queue, because I know that my macro will slip at some point and I build a margin of error for that.
You realize the high templar is a gateway unit, right?.
Which is effective against roaches? Or Thors?
In any case, I don't use colossus at all in pvt and only about 30% of the time in pvz. If you think gateway units are bad then your knowledge of this game really needs improvement.
If you don't use colossus at all in PvT you're depriving yourself of some oppertunity, hell, even if you never used archons or carriers at all in PvT you would, there is always a possible situation where these units are the optimal answer. Every unit can and should be used at some point.
That being said, my standard strat in PvT is 2gate / stargate (phoenix) -> fast templar tech. But I know that when Thors come out, or even a tank heavy army with marauders in the front stopping your zealots from reaching them, I'd better get some immortals out fast.
On December 16 2010 02:00 gangstarr wrote: Essentially, if you have 4 marines queued, you could have made one marine and also built a barracks. There should be no opportunity to queue, and if there is: build another unit producing structure.
If you have infinite APM to spare maybe. Making a baracks with an SCV requires APM, you have to go back to your base and do that. Queuing up a unit requires less APM. And APM is a resource, you can only do so many things and sometimes microing a battle to come out on top, which can be done simultaneously with queuing, instead of going bac kto your base during that battle, is simply more optimal.
On December 16 2010 01:56 koreasilver wrote:What in the world are you talking about? I said if you mistakenly miss a production cycle and make barracks with the accumulated money. If you fucked up and missed a cycle and made additional production facilities because of the money that stacked up because of your fuck up.
Obviously you need to fucking make the right amount of production facilities according to your economy. The right amount and the right timing is all up to how much you've played and your experiences, and this is why you should not queue up at all in the earlygame. What I'm saying is that in the lategame AFTER you have the right amount of unit production facilities you should not make more facilities because your economy can't handle it. It would be absolutely superfluous and the gain that you gain from it isn't really gain. Having constant 6-8 production is better than missing a production cycle and making 2 more buildings. In the late game for not only this but other myriad of reasons. Gamers that spend their entire lives playing this game and have 300-500apm queue up slightly in the lategame or miss their cycles for a reason.
[i]If you mistakenly miss a production cycle[i] then the money is gone. Period. You can make barracks with it if you want, if you can't produce out of them it doesn't matter at that point, the money is floated and worthless anyway. Or you can queue units which doesn't help you at all in any way. At least you can cover up your future mistakes with the extra racks.
If your economy can't handle it, then it can't handle queuing either. We're talking about the exact same amount of minerals that you lost because you forgot to use, and they go to waste either way.
You still don't get it. Queuing does NOTHING FOR YOU. The money on queued units IS STILL FLOATED. It is EXACTLY the same as being in the top right. Making extra money-spending buildings is the ONLY way to get any use at all out of that money, should you make the mistakes in the first place.
Yes, even at pro levels, they make mistakes. How do they fix it? By throwing down more gates, racks, or hatches. Like I said. They do not queue units.
If you constantly make units and never miss one, you're still going to start stockpiling money because you're constantly making new workers, thus increasing your income.
If you can research an upgrade with the excess money, great. If you can make a new production building or expansion with the money, great. If you can't afford a new upgrade and you're seconds away from an important fight? Queueing is the optimal move just because it's fast to physically do. You can't afford to make extra buildings, it takes too damn long to grab the workers and order them. All you have time for is mashing a few hotkeys until you're broke then it's time to micro.
In this case there is a difference between queueing and doing nothing, because once that first cycle of units finishes you can't count on having the time to hit your macro hotkeys. Best case scenario is you have a perfect timer in your head and know exactly when your first cycle of units finishes, but what if that time comes and you're aiming spells or dodging them or running away from a detector or something? Then you fucking regret not queueing.
High level gameplay tends to have a lot of little skirmishes and big standoffs that you can't afford to slip up on and let spiral out of control, so queue queue queue.
On December 16 2010 01:52 darmousseh wrote: Whoa, at first I thought it said "Queening is bad" and I thought there was some insightful math or theorycrafting about queens being a waste of resources since this is supposed to be a strategy thread, but then I read it again and saw that it basically was saying something that anyone who has ever played an rts would know.
Don't Queue. Profit.
Making the next set of units like 3 seconds before the current set finishes is fine, but anything more than that and you aren't playing efficiently.
No dude, he's trying to argue that queuing is good, that's what's so fucked up about it.
Nope. I'm trying to argue that queuing is better than not producing. Ideal is of course to only ever have one unit more in queue right when production is about to finish. But that ideal is unattainable even by pros, and it is better to approach it form the side of queuing, than to approach and improve towards it it from the side of not producing.
Because if you do the former, you only will have some temporarily unused resources. If you do the latter, you will have unused resources, and lost production cycles.
In any case, I don't use colossus at all in pvt and only about 30% of the time in pvz. If you think gateway units are bad then your knowledge of this game really needs improvement.
If you don't use colossus at all in PvT you're depriving yourself of some oppertunity, hell, even if you never used archons or carriers at all in PvT you would, there is always a possible situation where these units are the optimal answer. Every unit can and should be used at some point.
That being said, my standard strat in PvT is 2gate / stargate (phoenix) -> fast templar tech. But I know that when Thors come out, or even a tank heavy army with marauders in the front stopping your zealots from reaching them, I'd better get some immortals out fast.
Zealots with forcefield and stalker support are fine against roaches. When the hydras come out add storm and you're fine.
Thors are weak against groups of zealots.
Colossus are more of a liability the way I play because they are big "kill-me" signs walking all over the map... and vikings have 9 range...
I'm not saying that gateway-only is the only way to go, I'm just saying that it is a possible and very viable style of play. Look at HongUn vs. Rain game 1.
Think about it. I have 50 minerals and a Barracks. I forget to make a marine. Now I have 100 minerals by the time I start my first marine. I queue a second marine because I read some dumbass giving stupid advice on TeamLiquid, and guess what? By the time the first marine's done I'm at 100 minerals again! That 50 IS STILL FLOATING AND COMPLETELY UNUSED.
Yes, And the next time you would have idled because your macro slips, you'll be back at 50 again and you have produced that marine instead of idling the baracks. =/
The mistake will happen again, and again, and again, get used to it.
WRONG. The next time you would have idled because your macro slips, you'll gain ANOTHER 50 and get higher and higher. Queing does NOT solve this. Your math is wrong, you have no logic, and you refuse to think about it the right way. There is a VERY GOOD REASON that EVERYONE in the RTS community KNOWS queuing is bad. IT IS. You can argue all day long, you'll still be wrong.
Not queuing is making the assumption that in the future, your macro will never ever slip. I queue, because I know that my macro will slip at some point and I build a margin of error for that.
NO!!!! Queing IS A WASTE OF MONEY. It is completely IRRELEVANT whether or not your macro is good! Queing is still a complete and utter waste of money! Every single unit that is queued is simply money in the top right, that's ALL it is. It doesn't help you AT ALL.
Queuing DOES NOT cover up your "future mistakes". It doesn't do that at all. You have no evidence or logic to suggest that it does. ALL OF THAT MONEY IS WASTED. The thing you should do if you expect yourself to have bad macro (and have come to the stupid, idiotic conclusion that you can't improve it) is BUILD MORE BUILDINGS so you can actually use that money. Queing doesn't cover ANYTHING up it only gives you a completely and utterly false sense of having good macro. It is every bit as bad as having lots of money in every single way, period.
On December 16 2010 01:52 darmousseh wrote: Whoa, at first I thought it said "Queening is bad" and I thought there was some insightful math or theorycrafting about queens being a waste of resources since this is supposed to be a strategy thread, but then I read it again and saw that it basically was saying something that anyone who has ever played an rts would know.
Don't Queue. Profit.
Making the next set of units like 3 seconds before the current set finishes is fine, but anything more than that and you aren't playing efficiently.
No dude, he's trying to argue that queuing is good, that's what's so fucked up about it.
Nope. I'm trying to argue that queuing is better than not producing. Ideal is of course to only ever have one unit more in queue right when production is about to finish. But that ideal is unattainable even by pros, and it is better to approach it form the side of queuing, than to approach and improve towards it it from the side of not producing.
Because if you do the former, you only will have some temporarily unused resources. If you do the latter, you will have unused resources, and lost production cycles.
Better queue than not produce.
And it needs to be stressed why this ideal is unattainable. It's not because people are imperfect or bad or whatever, it's because there are situations where you literally CAN'T FUCKING MACRO AT ALL if you want to avoid a disastrous army loss.
On December 16 2010 01:56 koreasilver wrote:What in the world are you talking about? I said if you mistakenly miss a production cycle and make barracks with the accumulated money. If you fucked up and missed a cycle and made additional production facilities because of the money that stacked up because of your fuck up.
Obviously you need to fucking make the right amount of production facilities according to your economy. The right amount and the right timing is all up to how much you've played and your experiences, and this is why you should not queue up at all in the earlygame. What I'm saying is that in the lategame AFTER you have the right amount of unit production facilities you should not make more facilities because your economy can't handle it. It would be absolutely superfluous and the gain that you gain from it isn't really gain. Having constant 6-8 production is better than missing a production cycle and making 2 more buildings. In the late game for not only this but other myriad of reasons. Gamers that spend their entire lives playing this game and have 300-500apm queue up slightly in the lategame or miss their cycles for a reason.
[i]If you mistakenly miss a production cycle[i] then the money is gone. Period. You can make barracks with it if you want, if you can't produce out of them it doesn't matter at that point, the money is floated and worthless anyway. Or you can queue units which doesn't help you at all in any way. At least you can cover up your future mistakes with the extra racks.
If your economy can't handle it, then it can't handle queuing either. We're talking about the exact same amount of minerals that you lost because you forgot to use, and they go to waste either way.
You still don't get it. Queuing does NOTHING FOR YOU. The money on queued units IS STILL FLOATED. It is EXACTLY the same as being in the top right. Making extra money-spending buildings is the ONLY way to get any use at all out of that money, should you make the mistakes in the first place.
Yes, even at pro levels, they make mistakes. How do they fix it? By throwing down more gates, racks, or hatches. Like I said. They do not queue units.
If you miss a production cycle then the money just floats. It's not gone, it's there. Now, the reason why queuing can work with your economy while making more rax beyond the point of economic stability, 6 for 2base for example, is because if you queue a cycle extra it's 300 minerals and it gives you the benefit of completely constant unit production. If you miss a cycle and make extra rax there's a sunk cost of 150 minerals and for every cycle it's an additional 50 minerals (not to mention, you missed a cycle). Making extra rax like this can't work because it will eat away at the slight surplus minerals that you actually kinda need in the lategame much faster. The reason why queuing is better than not queuing if you cannot macro perfectly in the lategame (hint: no one can) is because it still allows constant unit production while also giving you the ability to focus on the myriad of other things that are going to be happening at that point of the game.
Macro is important but at this point of the game queuing can be desirable because there are so many other things you must do. There's also a reason why progamers don't put down too many more facilities even when their money stocks up too. If you go past the optimal point then it actually becomes detrimental. Having constant unit production is more important than just having a temporary spurt of units from extra production facilities that you will be unable to power.
I'm just going to have to say that anyone that thinks queuing is bad in the lategame after all the facilities have been laid down is extremely delusional and/or thinks that macro alone is the important factor in the lategame.
On December 16 2010 01:52 darmousseh wrote: Whoa, at first I thought it said "Queening is bad" and I thought there was some insightful math or theorycrafting about queens being a waste of resources since this is supposed to be a strategy thread, but then I read it again and saw that it basically was saying something that anyone who has ever played an rts would know.
Don't Queue. Profit.
Making the next set of units like 3 seconds before the current set finishes is fine, but anything more than that and you aren't playing efficiently.
No dude, he's trying to argue that queuing is good, that's what's so fucked up about it.
Nope. I'm trying to argue that queuing is better than not producing. Ideal is of course to only ever have one unit more in queue right when production is about to finish. But that ideal is unattainable even by pros, and it is better to approach it form the side of queuing, than to approach and improve towards it it from the side of not producing.
Because if you do the former, you only will have some temporarily unused resources. If you do the latter, you will have unused resources, and lost production cycles.
Better queue than not produce.
Ok, I guess I can agree that queueing is extremely marginally better than not producing. But building extra structures to spend the money with is vastly superior in every way. And you're grossly exaggerating the difficulty of constantly producing units. It is very doable and is done by a lot of players. There ARE people with very nearly perfect Macro, and the game is pretty new, within a few years there will be plenty of people with perfect mechanics. It's not unachievable in this game (it was probably in SC1). And if you see a game where IdrA is not harassed at all then there WON'T be any energy on his queens.
On December 16 2010 02:16 koreasilver wrote:I'm just going to have to say that anyone that thinks queuing is bad in the lategame after all the facilities have been laid down is extremely delusional and/or thinks that macro alone is the important factor in the lategame.
No, I'm afraid YOU are the one deluding yourself. YOU are the crazy one with an outlandish opinion who is going against the well-known fact that queueing is bad. Therefore YOU are the one who has to prove your point. You have failed to do so, and you're completely ignoring all the sound reasons why queueing is bad. YOU are the delusional one. Think about that possibility for a moment.
I don't know what else I can say beyond what I've said. If you still don't get it, I don't know how to help you. I hope someday you realize how bad this is for your game, it's a bad habit and it doesn't even help you in the short term.
On December 16 2010 02:02 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote:
Think about it. I have 50 minerals and a Barracks. I forget to make a marine. Now I have 100 minerals by the time I start my first marine. I queue a second marine because I read some dumbass giving stupid advice on TeamLiquid, and guess what? By the time the first marine's done I'm at 100 minerals again! That 50 IS STILL FLOATING AND COMPLETELY UNUSED.
Yes, And the next time you would have idled because your macro slips, you'll be back at 50 again and you have produced that marine instead of idling the baracks. =/
The mistake will happen again, and again, and again, get used to it.
WRONG. The next time you would have idled because your macro slips, you'll gain ANOTHER 50 and get higher and higher. Queing does NOT solve this. Your math is wrong, you have no logic, and you refuse to think about it the right way. There is a VERY GOOD REASON that EVERYONE in the RTS community KNOWS queuing is bad. IT IS. You can argue all day long, you'll still be wrong.
Not queuing is making the assumption that in the future, your macro will never ever slip. I queue, because I know that my macro will slip at some point and I build a margin of error for that.
NO!!!! Queing IS A WASTE OF MONEY. It is completely IRRELEVANT whether or not your macro is good! Queing is still a complete and utter waste of money! Every single unit that is queued is simply money in the top right, that's ALL it is. It doesn't help you AT ALL.
Queuing DOES NOT cover up your "future mistakes". It doesn't do that at all. You have no evidence or logic to suggest that it does. ALL OF THAT MONEY IS WASTED. The thing you should do if you expect yourself to have bad macro (and have come to the stupid, idiotic conclusion that you can't improve it) is BUILD MORE BUILDINGS so you can actually use that money. Queing doesn't cover ANYTHING up it only gives you a completely and utterly false sense of having good macro. It is every bit as bad as having lots of money in every single way, period.
Okay, I see what the problem is (besides the misuse of upper-case).
You know that it does not get higher when you queued it right? That's the entire point we're making? If you queued up 2 marines, and your macro slips a while, you've made a buffer for yourself. So you will keep producing as usual even though you forgot it for a while because you were tied up.
That's the point of queuing up, it stops your facilities from idling in the future, or at least makes it a tonne less likely, because you've built a buffer.
Ok, I guess I can agree that queueing is extremely marginally better than not producing. But building extra structures to spend the money with is vastly superior in every way. And you're grossly exaggerating the difficulty of constantly producing units. It is very doable and is done by a lot of players. There ARE people with very nearly perfect Macro, and the game is pretty new, within a few years there will be plenty of people with perfect mechanics. It's not unachievable in this game (it was probably in SC1). And if you see a game where IdrA is not harassed at all then there WON'T be any energy on his queens.
Yeah, duh, if no one attacks me and just lets me be, my macro would be spot on too, the part where it slips is where you're forcefielding and storming while putting your colossus back and forth to hold on to your gold expo.
Putting pressure is not only to directly destroy, but also to divide attention.
For me, personally, I'd much rather spend the money that I'd be using on those queued marines for another Barracks or a factory or something. I agree that, when you first start out with Starcraft and you're learning the basics and mechanics of the game, queuing looks nice and easy to do - you can train an army while spending all of your time looking at the battle going on between you and your opponent's troops.
However, if I try to consciously avoid queuing, I force myself to make my timing on things better; I force myself to be like "oh, hey, I need to start up another batch of marines!" It's kind of like how, with experience, you just feel that you need to make another SCV - you've gotten the timing down and you just know what you need to do and when you need to do it.
Not to mention that queuing your units is about as useful as not spending your money for the same exact reason: you have money just sitting there not being used. The only thing queuing would help with is for really new players who just don't have very good timing, and even then, if they work at it and force themselves to improve on their timing, they'll get better at it. Learning the timing of things is one of the most useful things I've learned to do in this game. It especially helps when you're in a battle and you need to macro in the middle of it. I don't need to constantly switch between my army and my barracks and my starports and my command centers because I have a pretty good feel of when the units are going to finish.
On December 16 2010 02:02 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote:
Think about it. I have 50 minerals and a Barracks. I forget to make a marine. Now I have 100 minerals by the time I start my first marine. I queue a second marine because I read some dumbass giving stupid advice on TeamLiquid, and guess what? By the time the first marine's done I'm at 100 minerals again! That 50 IS STILL FLOATING AND COMPLETELY UNUSED.
Yes, And the next time you would have idled because your macro slips, you'll be back at 50 again and you have produced that marine instead of idling the baracks. =/
The mistake will happen again, and again, and again, get used to it.
WRONG. The next time you would have idled because your macro slips, you'll gain ANOTHER 50 and get higher and higher. Queing does NOT solve this. Your math is wrong, you have no logic, and you refuse to think about it the right way. There is a VERY GOOD REASON that EVERYONE in the RTS community KNOWS queuing is bad. IT IS. You can argue all day long, you'll still be wrong.
Not queuing is making the assumption that in the future, your macro will never ever slip. I queue, because I know that my macro will slip at some point and I build a margin of error for that.
NO!!!! Queing IS A WASTE OF MONEY. It is completely IRRELEVANT whether or not your macro is good! Queing is still a complete and utter waste of money! Every single unit that is queued is simply money in the top right, that's ALL it is. It doesn't help you AT ALL.
Queuing DOES NOT cover up your "future mistakes". It doesn't do that at all. You have no evidence or logic to suggest that it does. ALL OF THAT MONEY IS WASTED. The thing you should do if you expect yourself to have bad macro (and have come to the stupid, idiotic conclusion that you can't improve it) is BUILD MORE BUILDINGS so you can actually use that money. Queing doesn't cover ANYTHING up it only gives you a completely and utterly false sense of having good macro. It is every bit as bad as having lots of money in every single way, period.
Okay, I see what the problem is (besides the misuse of upper-case).
You know that it does not get higher when you queued it right? That's the entire point we're making? If you queued up 2 marines, and your macro slips a while, you've made a buffer for yourself. So you will keep producing as usual even though you forgot it for a while because you were tied up.
That's the point of queuing up, it stops your facilities from idling in the future, or at least makes it a tonne less likely, because you've built a buffer.
Making extra buildings gives you a much bigger, much more significant buffer.
On December 16 2010 01:52 darmousseh wrote: Whoa, at first I thought it said "Queening is bad" and I thought there was some insightful math or theorycrafting about queens being a waste of resources since this is supposed to be a strategy thread, but then I read it again and saw that it basically was saying something that anyone who has ever played an rts would know.
Don't Queue. Profit.
Making the next set of units like 3 seconds before the current set finishes is fine, but anything more than that and you aren't playing efficiently.
No dude, he's trying to argue that queuing is good, that's what's so fucked up about it.
He's trying to hide the fact that he is a bad player and trying to justify a bad decision kinda like "no scouting" discussions. If you are queueing units then it hides the fact that your money is really high. If you have high money, then work on keeping it low by getting more upgrades or units or making more production buildings. The only time you should ever have more than 1k minerals is when you have a 200/200 army and have already gotten all of your necessary upgrades and have enough production buildings to basically remax your army in 3-4 production cycles.
On December 16 2010 02:25 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote:
On December 16 2010 02:14 telfire wrote:
On December 16 2010 02:02 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote:
Think about it. I have 50 minerals and a Barracks. I forget to make a marine. Now I have 100 minerals by the time I start my first marine. I queue a second marine because I read some dumbass giving stupid advice on TeamLiquid, and guess what? By the time the first marine's done I'm at 100 minerals again! That 50 IS STILL FLOATING AND COMPLETELY UNUSED.
Yes, And the next time you would have idled because your macro slips, you'll be back at 50 again and you have produced that marine instead of idling the baracks. =/
The mistake will happen again, and again, and again, get used to it.
WRONG. The next time you would have idled because your macro slips, you'll gain ANOTHER 50 and get higher and higher. Queing does NOT solve this. Your math is wrong, you have no logic, and you refuse to think about it the right way. There is a VERY GOOD REASON that EVERYONE in the RTS community KNOWS queuing is bad. IT IS. You can argue all day long, you'll still be wrong.
Not queuing is making the assumption that in the future, your macro will never ever slip. I queue, because I know that my macro will slip at some point and I build a margin of error for that.
NO!!!! Queing IS A WASTE OF MONEY. It is completely IRRELEVANT whether or not your macro is good! Queing is still a complete and utter waste of money! Every single unit that is queued is simply money in the top right, that's ALL it is. It doesn't help you AT ALL.
Queuing DOES NOT cover up your "future mistakes". It doesn't do that at all. You have no evidence or logic to suggest that it does. ALL OF THAT MONEY IS WASTED. The thing you should do if you expect yourself to have bad macro (and have come to the stupid, idiotic conclusion that you can't improve it) is BUILD MORE BUILDINGS so you can actually use that money. Queing doesn't cover ANYTHING up it only gives you a completely and utterly false sense of having good macro. It is every bit as bad as having lots of money in every single way, period.
Okay, I see what the problem is (besides the misuse of upper-case).
You know that it does not get higher when you queued it right? That's the entire point we're making? If you queued up 2 marines, and your macro slips a while, you've made a buffer for yourself. So you will keep producing as usual even though you forgot it for a while because you were tied up.
That's the point of queuing up, it stops your facilities from idling in the future, or at least makes it a tonne less likely, because you've built a buffer.
Making extra buildings gives you a much bigger, much more significant buffer.
It also loses you battles because you can't micro and command SCV's at the same time to go the right spot, while you can queue up and micro at the same time.
Also, it hardly gives you more advantage, you have to realize that after you queued up for the first time and invested like 200 minerals into that, you will never have idle time ever again. You basically pay some price to be assured of never having idle time ever again.
On December 16 2010 01:52 darmousseh wrote: Whoa, at first I thought it said "Queening is bad" and I thought there was some insightful math or theorycrafting about queens being a waste of resources since this is supposed to be a strategy thread, but then I read it again and saw that it basically was saying something that anyone who has ever played an rts would know.
Don't Queue. Profit.
Making the next set of units like 3 seconds before the current set finishes is fine, but anything more than that and you aren't playing efficiently.
No dude, he's trying to argue that queuing is good, that's what's so fucked up about it.
He's trying to hide the fact that he is a bad player and trying to justify a bad decision kinda like "no scouting" discussions. If you are queueing units then it hides the fact that your money is really high. If you have high money, then work on keeping it low by getting more upgrades or units or making more production buildings. The only time you should ever have more than 1k minerals is when you have a 200/200 army and have already gotten all of your necessary upgrades and have enough production buildings to basically remax your army in 3-4 production cycles.
How do threads like these survive?
No, he is admitting that he is an imperfect player and he uses a strategy that accounts for that. Rather than using a strategy that assumes that he is perfect which he is not.
Queuing up is not about dumping money, it's about building a buffer for the future so that when your macro slips again, your facilities don't become idle.
Lower league players should try and never que, for the most part the pro players and high diamond players who que are only doing it because they know they won't be able to be paying attention for the next x amount of time so they need to focus on micro, at any other league, queing should be avoided because it is very likely that you are not super micro gosu all over the map.
On December 16 2010 01:52 darmousseh wrote: Whoa, at first I thought it said "Queening is bad" and I thought there was some insightful math or theorycrafting about queens being a waste of resources since this is supposed to be a strategy thread, but then I read it again and saw that it basically was saying something that anyone who has ever played an rts would know.
Don't Queue. Profit.
Making the next set of units like 3 seconds before the current set finishes is fine, but anything more than that and you aren't playing efficiently.
No dude, he's trying to argue that queuing is good, that's what's so fucked up about it.
He's trying to hide the fact that he is a bad player and trying to justify a bad decision kinda like "no scouting" discussions. If you are queueing units then it hides the fact that your money is really high. If you have high money, then work on keeping it low by getting more upgrades or units or making more production buildings. The only time you should ever have more than 1k minerals is when you have a 200/200 army and have already gotten all of your necessary upgrades and have enough production buildings to basically remax your army in 3-4 production cycles.
How do threads like these survive?
Because some bad players think that queuing in the early game can be justified and some other delusional fantasyland players also think that queuing in the late game can't be justified under any circumstance.
Its not vs queueing vs keeping your money low. Queue just gives the appearance that your money is low, you actually just have money tied up in the queue, which is no different than in your bank.
When a building is destroyed, do you lose the money for stuff in the queue?
I have a problem, I am unable to do X effectively, so lately I've been doing Y even though i know i'm not supposed to. Most people tell me that not doing X is bad, but I am not good enough to do X so i've been doing Y. Is doing Y so bad? (Replace X and Y with anything you want)
If you are having a problem keeping money low, then freaking work on fixing that problem. That's the only way to get better.
Let me give you some examples of X and Y.
X = scouting Y = not scouting
X = keeping money low Y = queueing units
X = Saving money Y = Using a credit card
X = Practicing Y = Cheating
X = Learning to play Y = Whining about balance/Trying to justify bad ideas.
On December 16 2010 02:42 darmousseh wrote: Essentially what this post is about is this.
I have a problem, I am unable to do X effectively, so lately I've been doing Y even though i know i'm not supposed to. Most people tell me that not doing X is bad, but I am not good enough to do X so i've been doing Y. Is doing Y so bad? (Replace X and Y with anything you want)
If you are having a problem keeping money low, then freaking work on fixing that problem. That's the only way to get better.
Let me give you some examples of X and Y.
X = scouting Y = not scouting
X = keeping money low Y = queueing units
X = Saving money Y = Using a credit card
X = Practicing Y = Cheating
X = Learning to play Y = Whining about balance/Trying to justify bad ideas.
i can apply this format to some of my real life friends and just about anything they do, awesome
On December 16 2010 02:42 darmousseh wrote: Essentially what this post is about is this.
I have a problem, I am unable to do X effectively, so lately I've been doing Y even though i know i'm not supposed to. Most people tell me that not doing X is bad, but I am not good enough to do X so i've been doing Y. Is doing Y so bad? (Replace X and Y with anything you want)
If you are having a problem keeping money low, then freaking work on fixing that problem. That's the only way to get better.
Let me give you some examples of X and Y.
X = scouting Y = not scouting
X = keeping money low Y = queueing units
X = Saving money Y = Using a credit card
X = Practicing Y = Cheating
X = Learning to play Y = Whining about balance/Trying to justify bad ideas.
No, it's not about that, it's about knowing that you will never, ever, be able to have perfect macro and never skip a production cycle if you don't queue up, and building a buffer for yourself by making a small deposit at one point to give yourself a margin.
Yeah, not queuing up and having spot on macro and mechanics even in the face of pressure and 3-pronged attacks is the idea situation, but also unatainable, I play it safe, I know that there will be a time, especially in hectic mid-game that I will slip, so I queue because I anticipate that I will be making errors.
Sure, I could train to never make errors again, but it's an unrealistic goal.
Speaking of queuing, I see top players queue up units all the time.
Especially early game with workers. Is there any possible way you can get more money by queuing at strategic times? Or is it just that they know exactly how many units they'll be making with that money anyway so it doesn't hurt them to spend it right away?
On December 16 2010 02:25 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote:
On December 16 2010 02:14 telfire wrote:
On December 16 2010 02:02 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote:
Think about it. I have 50 minerals and a Barracks. I forget to make a marine. Now I have 100 minerals by the time I start my first marine. I queue a second marine because I read some dumbass giving stupid advice on TeamLiquid, and guess what? By the time the first marine's done I'm at 100 minerals again! That 50 IS STILL FLOATING AND COMPLETELY UNUSED.
Yes, And the next time you would have idled because your macro slips, you'll be back at 50 again and you have produced that marine instead of idling the baracks. =/
The mistake will happen again, and again, and again, get used to it.
WRONG. The next time you would have idled because your macro slips, you'll gain ANOTHER 50 and get higher and higher. Queing does NOT solve this. Your math is wrong, you have no logic, and you refuse to think about it the right way. There is a VERY GOOD REASON that EVERYONE in the RTS community KNOWS queuing is bad. IT IS. You can argue all day long, you'll still be wrong.
Not queuing is making the assumption that in the future, your macro will never ever slip. I queue, because I know that my macro will slip at some point and I build a margin of error for that.
NO!!!! Queing IS A WASTE OF MONEY. It is completely IRRELEVANT whether or not your macro is good! Queing is still a complete and utter waste of money! Every single unit that is queued is simply money in the top right, that's ALL it is. It doesn't help you AT ALL.
Queuing DOES NOT cover up your "future mistakes". It doesn't do that at all. You have no evidence or logic to suggest that it does. ALL OF THAT MONEY IS WASTED. The thing you should do if you expect yourself to have bad macro (and have come to the stupid, idiotic conclusion that you can't improve it) is BUILD MORE BUILDINGS so you can actually use that money. Queing doesn't cover ANYTHING up it only gives you a completely and utterly false sense of having good macro. It is every bit as bad as having lots of money in every single way, period.
Okay, I see what the problem is (besides the misuse of upper-case).
You know that it does not get higher when you queued it right? That's the entire point we're making? If you queued up 2 marines, and your macro slips a while, you've made a buffer for yourself. So you will keep producing as usual even though you forgot it for a while because you were tied up.
That's the point of queuing up, it stops your facilities from idling in the future, or at least makes it a tonne less likely, because you've built a buffer.
Making extra buildings gives you a much bigger, much more significant buffer.
It also loses you battles because you can't micro and command SCV's at the same time to go the right spot, while you can queue up and micro at the same time.
Also, it hardly gives you more advantage, you have to realize that after you queued up for the first time and invested like 200 minerals into that, you will never have idle time ever again. You basically pay some price to be assured of never having idle time ever again.
On December 16 2010 01:52 darmousseh wrote: Whoa, at first I thought it said "Queening is bad" and I thought there was some insightful math or theorycrafting about queens being a waste of resources since this is supposed to be a strategy thread, but then I read it again and saw that it basically was saying something that anyone who has ever played an rts would know.
Don't Queue. Profit.
Making the next set of units like 3 seconds before the current set finishes is fine, but anything more than that and you aren't playing efficiently.
No dude, he's trying to argue that queuing is good, that's what's so fucked up about it.
He's trying to hide the fact that he is a bad player and trying to justify a bad decision kinda like "no scouting" discussions. If you are queueing units then it hides the fact that your money is really high. If you have high money, then work on keeping it low by getting more upgrades or units or making more production buildings. The only time you should ever have more than 1k minerals is when you have a 200/200 army and have already gotten all of your necessary upgrades and have enough production buildings to basically remax your army in 3-4 production cycles.
How do threads like these survive?
No, he is admitting that he is an imperfect player and he uses a strategy that accounts for that. Rather than using a strategy that assumes that he is perfect which he is not.
Queuing up is not about dumping money, it's about building a buffer for the future so that when your macro slips again, your facilities don't become idle.
Day9 made an excellent daily a few months ago about why queueing is bad and why queueing in a game makes you a worse player.
Essentially, the purpose of a game is to win and the best way to win a game is play as optimally as you can. If you are not playing optimally, then you can improve. If your goal is to be able to play optimally, then in sc2, the most optimal play is produce units at the exact moment your previous unit finishes. Most pros aren't this good, so they either 1. Make a unit a few seconds early or 2. Make a unit a few seconds late. Since 1 tends to have less drastic consequences, most pros start their next production cycle a few seconds before their current production cycle finishes (or a few seconds after if you are zerg or you are using warpgates). The goal however, is to remove to minimize this as much as possible. Another goal is to use your minerals efficiently and to keep your mineral count low. If you have stockpiled 100 minerals, then that is 100 more minerals that could have been your army meaning you have a smaller army. When you queue units, you aren't producing them faster, you are giving yourself the illusion that you are keeping your money low. So if you see your money high, you think "Oh I guess I can queue more units" which is the worst decision possible. If you have too much money, then it means you don't have enough tech/production buildings/workers/supply/static defense. When you are practicing, even if you aren't good at producing on every cooldown, pretending that the cooldown doesn't matter will not help you improve, it will make you worse. You will develop a bad habit that will be difficult to break when you get better if you are ever able to get better.
When the federal agents are trying to determine if a bill is counterfeit do you know what they do? Do they study what a counterfeit looks like? No! They study the real thing. Only by learning all of the intricacies of what a real bill looks can they recognize when something is a counterfeit. Only by trying to play optionally by practicing learning to keep your money low and your queue empty can you learn to recognize when you aren't playing optimally.
It is just about knowing that you need your attention somewhere else soon so you won't be able to perfectly keep up with macro. If you have like 5 rax and 3 OCs you can't really perfectly build every unit just when the old one is finished. It is no crime to queue up one or two Probes/SCVs, and will yield you a more constant worker production than trying to do it perfectly once you enter midgame. What you should avoid though is queuing up more expensive units that also take a longer time to build. You also shouldn't queue up in the early game because you want to execute your BO as cleanly as possible.
On December 16 2010 02:49 TedJustice wrote: Speaking of queuing, I see top players queue up units all the time.
Especially early game with workers. Is there any possible way you can get more money by queuing at strategic times? Or is it just that they know exactly how many units they'll be making with that money anyway so it doesn't hurt them to spend it right away?
They have their build orders planned. I mean, it's not tht hard. Of course I queue up first til 9 probes, and then til 13, because I go 9 pylon -> 13 gate.
In later game it becomes more unpredictable and you can't do that any more.
That said though, I actually queue as much as I can possible queue at any time, I've trained myself to have a decent mental tab on just how much stuff I have in the queue and I cancel it automatically when I want to build different stuff as a response to something. It's not that unnatural to have 300 minerals and 200 gas floating at the time you have your three gates and one robo down, I usually put that in a queue and cancel it before every warp gate cycle.
On December 16 2010 02:49 TedJustice wrote: Speaking of queuing, I see top players queue up units all the time.
Especially early game with workers. Is there any possible way you can get more money by queuing at strategic times? Or is it just that they know exactly how many units they'll be making with that money anyway so it doesn't hurt them to spend it right away?
Queueing up workers in the beginning isn't terrible since you already have a specific plan in mind and you have absolutely nothing to spend the money on. This isn't the case past like 9 supply. As a rule of thumb i don't queue the workers at the beginning so that I don't get into a bad habit. If i find myself with too many queued workers, i go an cancel some of them, even if i'm going to remake them 5 seconds later. Once you have 9 supply, queueing workers makes your build slower.
Please read "The Goal" if you want a book to describe why you don't want a large inventory of parts in a production cycle. Everything you have should be contributing value, in this case either mining minerals/gas or creating attacking units which are actively attacking the enemy. Having resources stuck in "inventory" (ie queuing marines), is non value added, hence why its better to have an extra barracks and train yourself to always be activating the next production cycle, maybe only having one marine in queue before the current cycle ends.
If you queue, you did not spend your money... you just set it in a pile marked "Do not open before christmas"
Queueing just gives you the illusion that you are improving when you are not.
At best, queue 1 unit. Then it is easier to manage when you need to build things, without making your christmas savings pile too large.
But in the spirit of play to improve, what would you rather do?
Just try to not queue, and see how it goes. If you miss out on building some units, then you have spare money, make another building, and catch up that much faster. Worst thing that can happen is you lose, which is a stronger message to try hard to macro better. ^^
Just rethink the question "Spend your money" into "Spend your Effective Money" where Effective money is Your money + the value of all your queued things. Think of it like the people debating APM. "You need high APM to be awesome!" no, no you don't.... if anything you need high EAPM. Try to improve where it matters. Lose some games now, to win more games later. ^^
On December 16 2010 02:57 darmousseh wrote: The goal however, is to remove to minimize this as much as possible.
Yes, this is the goal, and this is a goal that is unrealistic to try to attain. ' Yes, the most ideal situation is to not queue and have spot on macro, but this is unrealistic to think you can achieve this. And in your attempts to try to achieve this you will have many an idle production facility.
Don't aim too high if missing means you have nothing at all.
Another goal is to use your minerals efficiently and to keep your mineral count low. If you have stockpiled 100 minerals, then that is 100 more minerals that could have been your army meaning you have a smaller army. When you queue units, you aren't producing them faster, you are giving yourself the illusion that you are keeping your money low. So if you see your money high, you think "Oh I guess I can queue more units" which is the worst decision possible. If you have too much money, then it means you don't have enough tech/production
No, you'renot giving yourself the illussion you have your money low, you're making a buffer.
You're building in a safety for yourself so that next time you slip up, you have things queued so production goes on as usual.
I don't queue to 'keep money low', I queue to make a buffer for myself anticipating that in the future I might slip.
buildings/workers/supply/static defense. When you are practicing, even if you aren't good at producing on every cooldown, pretending that the cooldown doesn't matter will not help you improve, it will make you worse. You will develop a bad habit that will be difficult to break when you get better if you are ever able to get better.
Well, I don't expect that, with training, I will ever be able to have perfect mechanics.
Let's be realistic, very few people in this thread have the potential to become progamers, even with rigorous practice, and even progamers still quite often lapse production cycles.
Also, as said before, you can, and should, cancel your queued units if you have other plans with that money.
When the federal agents are trying to determine if a bill is counterfeit do you know what they do? Do they study what a counterfeit looks like? No! They study the real thing. Only by learning all of the intricacies of what a real bill looks can they recognize when something is a counterfeit. Only by trying to play optionally by practicing learning to keep your money low and your queue empty can you learn to recognize when you aren't playing optimally.
This analogy means nothing, bills are not games of StarCraft 2.
I could just as well make an analogy saying that the only way to spot a killer is to learn about killer psychopathy, and not to try to see what makes people a normal man and everytime someone is weird call them a killer.
On December 16 2010 02:42 darmousseh wrote: Essentially what this post is about is this.
I have a problem, I am unable to do X effectively, so lately I've been doing Y even though i know i'm not supposed to. Most people tell me that not doing X is bad, but I am not good enough to do X so i've been doing Y. Is doing Y so bad? (Replace X and Y with anything you want)
If you are having a problem keeping money low, then freaking work on fixing that problem. That's the only way to get better.
Let me give you some examples of X and Y.
X = scouting Y = not scouting
X = keeping money low Y = queueing units
X = Saving money Y = Using a credit card
X = Practicing Y = Cheating
X = Learning to play Y = Whining about balance/Trying to justify bad ideas.
No, it's not about that, it's about knowing that you will never, ever, be able to have perfect macro and never skip a production cycle if you don't queue up, and building a buffer for yourself by making a small deposit at one point to give yourself a margin.
Yeah, not queuing up and having spot on macro and mechanics even in the face of pressure and 3-pronged attacks is the idea situation, but also unatainable, I play it safe, I know that there will be a time, especially in hectic mid-game that I will slip, so I queue because I anticipate that I will be making errors.
Sure, I could train to never make errors again, but it's an unrealistic goal.
Imagine if a baseball player said "If I swing at the ball, i might hit a pop fly, so I'm just not going to swing". Getting on base 100% of the time might be an unrealistic goal, but ti doesn't stop them from trying. Yes, macro can slip in the middle of battle, but that doesn't mean you should play sub optimally during that time. If anything, it should encourage you to multitask better.
I think there is a problem with saying "queuing is bad" when trying to teach new players or lower skilled players. Queuing is bad if the money could be better spent on production buildings/upgrades. e.g. a terran player going bio on 2 base with 4 or 5 production buildings up and building an army. That is when you build either A another production building or B another tech building.
You have to better elaborate and explain things properly sometimes.
I feel like a lot of people are missing the point that the OP's trying to make. Yeah, queuing units is BAD, but at low levels it's better to queue units than forgetting to make them.
As for the argument that it's a bad habit and queuing units will only take you to gold or something, I'm pretty sure people are smart enough to learn not to queue units eventually. I mean, give them some credit, lol.
On December 16 2010 01:25 Pokebunny wrote: I'm surprised there's so much negativity towards queueing. Those who argue that it is never good, may I ask what level you play(ed) at in SC2/BW? I find it quite beneficial at high level and never find it bottlenecking my play. I rarely queue more than one unit, but that one production round is often quite worth it.
I'm 2k+ diamond, but I play way too little since I chopped my pointyfinger... I'd consider myself around 2500+. That's a friggin moot point though.
I ask you instead, is it not better to try to play as optimally as possible to both explore new possibilities with the minerals/gas you ACTUALLY have rather than be stagnant in your skillprogression because you're into a rather bad habbits that lets you win games on the ladder, which is full of incompetent and undeveloped players at all levels?
The skill is knowing when you need to queue. Disregarding it entirely is just handicapping yourself.
In the early game you know. But this is a bad habbit aswell even with top players. It's not like it doesnt limit them, since they will have tried most avalible options, but it norrows your sight on what is possible to do with your money and it gets to be a habbit. I do this too, and I try to relearn, hard as fuck.
On December 16 2010 02:47 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote:
On December 16 2010 02:42 darmousseh wrote: Essentially what this post is about is this.
I have a problem, I am unable to do X effectively, so lately I've been doing Y even though i know i'm not supposed to. Most people tell me that not doing X is bad, but I am not good enough to do X so i've been doing Y. Is doing Y so bad? (Replace X and Y with anything you want)
If you are having a problem keeping money low, then freaking work on fixing that problem. That's the only way to get better.
Let me give you some examples of X and Y.
X = scouting Y = not scouting
X = keeping money low Y = queueing units
X = Saving money Y = Using a credit card
X = Practicing Y = Cheating
X = Learning to play Y = Whining about balance/Trying to justify bad ideas.
No, it's not about that, it's about knowing that you will never, ever, be able to have perfect macro and never skip a production cycle if you don't queue up, and building a buffer for yourself by making a small deposit at one point to give yourself a margin.
Yeah, not queuing up and having spot on macro and mechanics even in the face of pressure and 3-pronged attacks is the idea situation, but also unatainable, I play it safe, I know that there will be a time, especially in hectic mid-game that I will slip, so I queue because I anticipate that I will be making errors.
Sure, I could train to never make errors again, but it's an unrealistic goal.
You are delusional, and It's been stated why so many times in this thread so I wont do it again. You can continue to be a bad player, there is no need for you to justify why You are queing here and try to convince other players to be bad.
I agree to a certain degree with the OP and Silmakuoppaanikinko, queueing can sometimes be usefull. Ideally, you don't want to queue any unit at all, no matter what, so your money keeps flowing to your army in one way or the other, I think most of the posts on this thread have pointed that out.
Queueing gives you one important advantage though, and that is the oportunity to focus on something that needs you inmediate attention. If you're aware that you won't be able to Micro your army and Macro at the same time, queueing alows you to put Macro aside for a little while. That's as far as I can agree with the OP.
But there's something that should be pointed out. If you're spending your money the way you should, it's unlikely that you'll be able to queue units, and while it's not easy to keep tabs on your production buildings at the same time you're harassing or launching a frontal attack, it's something that needs to be done
The OP statement basically does not at all apply to Protoss or Zerg. This thread should have been directed at Terran only.
For the first 5 minutes of the game, Protoss can't possibly have enough resources to queue units. If they do, then they're going to hurt themselves because they should have been making something else, like an expansion or extra gateway or tech structure. After that, once Warp Gates are researched, there is no way of queuing units. Robotics Facility and Stargate units are too expensive to realistically queue, and Protoss, being a major macro-based race, should always be building, researching, or expanding any time they are not making units. Queuing expensive units just ruins this. It is also acceptable for Protoss to have a minor mineral/gas float in between warp-ins, since they will be making 6+ units at a time in the mid-late game.
Zerg, simply put, does not have any structure that can actually queue units, with the exception of the Queen being produced at the Hatchery.
Eh, I STILL queue at times as toss... but ONLY on a nexus, and ONLY after I chrono it. I don't want to waste any CB time, so I figure the 50 banked minerals is a smaller opportunity cost than the possibility that I may forget to build another probe after the first finishes.
the rule is, double tap probes on chrono'd nexus. (at least my rule)
Queueing does not keep your money low. It just moves it to a production structure that's already building something else. That money still hasn't been spent and for all intents and purposes isn't being spent until the unit starts getting made.
If you queue when your money starts getting high, you're wasting resources that are better spent expanding, making additional production structure, or just keeping up with other base stuff (pylons/probes/etc).
On December 16 2010 03:15 Jtn wrote: I feel like a lot of people are missing the point that the OP's trying to make. Yeah, queuing units is BAD, but at low levels it's better to queue units than forgetting to make them.
As for the argument that it's a bad habit and queuing units will only take you to gold or something, I'm pretty sure people are smart enough to learn not to queue units eventually. I mean, give them some credit, lol.
See I disagree. If I wanted to learn, and what better way to get a lesson on how to improve than LOSE in a real bad way, I would vote that Queueing is worse than not having enough shit.
------------------------ (as terrrrrrran)
Scenario A: You are queueing. 2 Base with 2 TechLabRax/1Star. You are queued to like... 3 or 4? You lose a fight because you didnt have enough shit because you thought your money was low so you didnt add enough production buildings. You might see the problem, but its not as obvious.
OR
Scenario B: You are not queueing. 2 Base with 2TechLabRax/1Star. You notice your money is stupid high. You make more buildings to spend the money, rather than queue. You make more units from the new buildings to spend the money. Problem solved, sort of.
OR
Scenario B2: You are not queueing. 2 Base with 2TechLabRax/1Star. You notice your money is stupid high. You lose a fight because you didn't have enough shit. You again notice your money is stupid high. You immediately know why you lost the fight ("FFS i could have had 2k more minerals worth of army!"), and where to improve.
That's how i see it. Harder to mechanically fix the issue at first, but you at least KNOW the issue, rather than wondering shit like "Was it my comp/Was it my race/Was I just outplayed?"
On December 16 2010 02:42 darmousseh wrote: Essentially what this post is about is this.
I have a problem, I am unable to do X effectively, so lately I've been doing Y even though i know i'm not supposed to. Most people tell me that not doing X is bad, but I am not good enough to do X so i've been doing Y. Is doing Y so bad? (Replace X and Y with anything you want)
If you are having a problem keeping money low, then freaking work on fixing that problem. That's the only way to get better.
Let me give you some examples of X and Y.
X = scouting Y = not scouting
X = keeping money low Y = queueing units
X = Saving money Y = Using a credit card
X = Practicing Y = Cheating
X = Learning to play Y = Whining about balance/Trying to justify bad ideas.
i can apply this format to some of my real life friends and just about anything they do, awesome
You can apply it a ton of different things. People do this in life in general. They think that since they can't ever be perfect at something that they shouldn't try and give up and do something less optimal instead. It is important to recognize your limits yes, but unless you try to surpass your previous ability, you will never know if it was possible.
I think my favorite recognition of this is found in two of my favorite animes/mangas.
1. Naruto. Naruto's goal is to be the best ninja ever. Even though people around him tell him he can't he never gives up on his goal. My favorite part is in one of the very early episodes when he tells konohamaru that "There are no shortcuts, only hard work".
2. Hiakru No Go. In the game of Go, these players try to play a move called the "hand of god" or the perfect move. Though they might never achieve it, it doesn't stop them from trying.
Tricks and suboptimal strategies can only get you so far until you reach a point you can't surpass. Eventually to improve, you have to relearn the game and break all of your bad habits which means you will get worse for a period of time, but in the end, you will be a much better player.
If anyone here wants to really learn strategy, pick up a book called "How you reassess your chess". Even though it is a way of understanding how to improve your chess abilities, the lessons it provides apply to all games from sc2 to soccer. He doesn't just provide a method of improving your chess, but provides a way for you to understand and critique your own play and to look at things objectively without letting your frustrations get in the way. One of the most important things he emphasizes is to stop playing the game wrong. He tells the story of a kid who played a hyper agressive style of chess and was able to get to 1900 in a short time, but then got stuck. His tricks and strategies weren't effective. He was playing suboptimally. It was becuase he didn't truly understand the game. He got lessons from the author and totally changed the way he thought about the game and thought about strategy games in general. Initally he got worse, but in like 4 months he was able to start improving past the point where he was before. The earlier you can learn to play the game correctly (instead of gimmicky or suboptimally) the less relearning you have to do later. Although IdrA knows that he has a tough time defending against early terran pressure isn't going to stop him from trying to play optimally. Sometimes people criticize him for this, but he's really trying to learn the game. In the end, these players who rely heavily on a single gimmicky or suboptimal strategy will fall behind when their strategies are no longer effective.
On December 16 2010 01:25 Pokebunny wrote: I'm surprised there's so much negativity towards queueing. Those who argue that it is never good, may I ask what level you play(ed) at in SC2/BW? I find it quite beneficial at high level and never find it bottlenecking my play. I rarely queue more than one unit, but that one production round is often quite worth it.
I'm 2k+ diamond, but I play way too little since I chopped my pointyfinger... I'd consider myself around 2500+. That's a friggin moot point though.
I ask you instead, is it not better to try to play as optimally as possible to both explore new possibilities with the minerals/gas you ACTUALLY have rather than be stagnant in your skillprogression because you're into a rather bad habbits that lets you win games on the ladder, which is full of incompetent and undeveloped players at all levels?
The skill is knowing when you need to queue. Disregarding it entirely is just handicapping yourself.
First of all it's different for different classes. What I need to do in the endgame as toss is to add more warpgates, so I can dump a big chunk of money into army, not turn them into gateways just so I can que. Zerg is completly different in the regard you just have to push your button once for 1 sec during battle and you're done with it.
Terran however is another thing, and I'm deffo not saying you should disregard queing, you should try your hardest to avoid it!
Imagine if a baseball player said "If I swing at the ball, i might hit a pop fly, so I'm just not going to swing". Getting on base 100% of the time might be an unrealistic goal, but ti doesn't stop them from trying. Yes, macro can slip in the middle of battle, but that doesn't mean you should play sub optimally during that time. If anything, it should encourage you to multitask better.
I simply see it as weighing the risk and gains.
The risk of queuing is not having money, around 400 minerals at max, when you really need it fast enough because you have to press a few extra hotkeys to cancel stuff.
The gain is never having idle production structures. It's simply assesing the chances. My estimate is that the pros of it outweigh the cons.
Sure, it's possible I lose a match because my money was tied up and I couldn't dequeue fast enough, but I reckon it's a lot more likely that I lose a match because of idle production facilities.
My spending isn't that good in late game, like most people, sure, in the opening when you're working mechanically and can still plan somewhat you don't queue and neither do youy have the money for it. But once you're both on four bases and it becomes a battle of sniping expansions and probes, doing two pronged attacks, I don't even really want to use any rules of how many production facilities I would need because calculating that would really cost me more time than I need paying attention to the drops and attacks.
You are delusional, and It's been stated why so many times in this thread so I wont do it again. You can continue to be a bad player, there is no need for you to justify why You are queing here and try to convince other players to be bad.
This thread is running circles...
Okay, answer me honestly, do you ever have idle production facilities?
On December 15 2010 17:10 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote:(Though to be honest, after winning two games with 160+ probes, I think I might need to cut down a bit.)
Replay or it didn't happen.
No, really. You won with 10 zealots, 4 stalkers and a colossus? I don't care if you can rebuild them all instantly, your opponents were terrible.
If low level players just want to win the game they're in then yes they probably should queue, like you say it's better than having idle buildings. However if they want to not suck at the game they need to try and get into the habit of both not queueing and generally macroing properly.
On December 15 2010 17:08 Holgerius wrote: Learn things properly from the begining IMO. Bad habits can be hard to get rid off.
This is very true, just learn it the proper way from the get go and as you get better you will notice that you get better with spending you money. if you que up several units that money is not being used at all i think its better to just put down more buildings or expand when the money is high and try to keep queing to a minimum
On December 15 2010 17:10 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote:(Though to be honest, after winning two games with 160+ probes, I think I might need to cut down a bit.)
Replay or it didn't happen.
No, really. You won with 10 zealots, 4 stalkers and a colossus? I don't care if you can rebuild them all instantly, your opponents were terrible.
They were dry, and they were not that good, it was a custom match.
I was playing like I always did, but these guys never heard of 'killing workers' it seems, so I was just doing my usual stuff of always keeping to make probes until I realized that my maxed army was really small. But at that point it didn't really matter, they were completely dry and for some reason with 10k banked I still was spamming nexus and probes all over the place because that's all I know and I didn't adapt to the fact that no one was killing my workers.
On December 16 2010 03:15 Jtn wrote: I feel like a lot of people are missing the point that the OP's trying to make. Yeah, queuing units is BAD, but at low levels it's better to queue units than forgetting to make them.
As for the argument that it's a bad habit and queuing units will only take you to gold or something, I'm pretty sure people are smart enough to learn not to queue units eventually. I mean, give them some credit, lol.
It's not about how smart you are. It's about being human. We are creatures of habit. If you start queuing now, not only will you not gain ANYTHING from it, but you will reinforce a terrible habit and I don't give a shit how smart you are, it WILL make it difficult to kick the habit.
On December 15 2010 17:38 acidfreak wrote: Queing gives you the ilusion that you are spending your money when in fact you are not. /thread
User was warned for this post
pretty much cosign with this. but i'll agree that at lower level, it doesn't hurt to queue up 2 or 3 infantry because they do build relatively quickly. however, queuing stuff like carriers, thors, expensive and slow-building units can really bite you in the ass and delay big things like expos or another unit producing structure
How can one improve if you've already given up trying? Then again, OP did specify that queue-stacking is viable in the low-level play, which I'm inclined to agree. Not the best groundwork for future potential, but certainly an effective solution for players looking for an easy way out.
I disagree 100% its teaching them to do it the wrong way and because of this they will suffer because of the habit they have created when they were in the lower leagues.
On December 15 2010 17:38 acidfreak wrote: Queing gives you the ilusion that you are spending your money when in fact you are not. /thread
User was warned for this post
pretty much cosign with this. but i'll agree that at lower level, it doesn't hurt to queue up 2 or 3 infantry because they do build relatively quickly. however, queuing stuff like carriers, thors, expensive and slow-building units can really bite you in the ass and delay big things like expos or another unit producing structure
Yep, I agree. Double queuing isn't a bad thing either, especially if you're going to be required to intensively micro for an extended period of time. Queue like a boss when you fight like a boss.
And if you're in the lead just throw down a command center if you're Terran because they're better than supply depots in the mid-late game.
I guess I should summarize the whole discussion. Because I went on a lot about that queuing can be an acceptable thing under certain circumstances (and filling in the next unit/research before the previous finishes is not queuing), it should be made clear when it is not acceptable:
When you are Zerg or Protoss (with the exception of chrono boosted probes).
When you have less than 3 bases.
When the unit in question takes longer than 30s to produce or costs more than 100 minerals.
When you have APM to spare.
When you have the ambition and time to be a top player.
You should only que when ur unit is like 90-95% done so that it can immidiately start producing the unit. Queing 2 or more units is always bad. If ur in the middle of a fight, look at ur money, then retreat, place down a cc and more production buildings. Queing is money wasted. I understand that lower level players dont have the nessesary apm to not que like multiple units on each production facility but they should learn the right way.
If queuing allows you to win a game you would have lost, you probably would have been better off losing that game. The results of games don't matter, getting better matters.
I don't know about queueing in the super lategame, though. I've seen pros do it, I know it would be better if you could keep up the same production without queueing, but there may come a point where drops are happening everywhere and it's just not feasible to remake all of your marines one at a time. Seems like it should always be doable with MBS, though...
I'm starting to think I'm not as idealistic (or perhaps ambitious) as some.
Winning makes me feel good. Feeling good makes me want to play more. Winning also advances my ladder rating so I play harder opponents. Playing harder opponents makes me want to improve because I don't win as much. It's a messed up cycle. My ambition to improve at starcraft does not stem from it being the 'right' thing to do, it stems from the fact that I like to win.
I'm not going to be a pro. I will never play more than 4 hours at a time and likely less than two hours on any given day. Part of the reason I like starcraft compared to other games is the depth of the strategy and understanding of the game which entertains my curious brain.
The reason I like the forums is to win arguements. Winning arguements make me feel good. Your parents were probably nazis.
IMHO if you are that worried about winning instead of improving your game skill, you should just cheese and get on with the next game.
I am a low skilled player but one of my main focuses has always been to keep money down, dont queue, but at the same time make sure im constantly making probes/scvs/drones.
Ive lost alot of games because ive been outmacro'd thanks to my low worker count or something of the like, but i re-examine the replay, see what went wrong and go into my next game trying to improve on it. Its that mind set that has made me alot better, although i still have plenty of ground to cover.
I just feel that the money could be reinvested in something else that will help you sooner, rather than later. If i ever find myself sitting on a large stockpile in minerals for some reason, i normally just made more production facilities, or in rare occasions dump it on an expo or 2, hoping for late game harvester advantage/map control. I personally see this as a better way of spending my excess.
I agree with the OP, with the following clarification to make it more palatable: - Don't fill up your queue. But having 1-2 units queued (2-4 in the case of a reactor) is sort of OK. - Don't queue expensive stuff. Do queue SCVs and marines. - Queue stuff when you're about to go battle / micro a lot, or when you're in a battle. Don't queue stuff when you're focusing just on macro.
And agreed with the guys who say, don't start to worry about queuing stuff less until you are losing to bigger armies and your production can't keep up.
..... not queueing is just asking a ridiculous amount out of every player who's in gold and under. When you have a rax with a reactor and you're pumping marines, chances are, that you'll end up failing by forgetting to constantly produce. By queueing up, sure you lose minerals at that moment, but technically after that period of time is over, you have the minerals again. At least you're constantly producing units. When I'm playing protoss, I queue up probes. I'm too busy trying to determine tech paths, building units out of warp gates (well no queue there duh). I don't want to be like "oh shit i forgot to build probes, and now my economy is totally screwed". Sure I lose 100 minerals because I queued up 2 extra probes, but if I don't have the apm to support it, I shouldn't.
It's like microing. Some beginners put way too much value on that. Sure, you can squeeze out a few units here and there, and maybe it'll help you win battles. But if you're microing and your apm doesn't allow you to continue unit production, avoid supply caps, and continue teching, then you're better off a-moving and having a solid macro.
Actually, it's practically almost exactly like micro. Sure, everyone who gets good HAS to learn to micro, but in the end, if you just concentrate on micro in the beginning, you will be lacking in the other more fundamental and important areas. And in the end it's usually never the reason you lose. The reason you lose is because you forgot to expand, didn't scout properly, didn't create any defense in time, made bad strategy decisions. You didn't lose because you built a gateway 10 seconds after, because you queued up 2 probes.
There are instances where queuing before you go into a battle can help to rally reinforcements because you don't have the APM to go back to your base and do it while in a battle, in this limited instance Queuing can be very helpful.
Yes. It's a bad habit. But what are we supposed to do when we don't have the APM to go back to the base and make more units? Just lose to a counter attack? While losing may be beneficial in the long term, practice-wise, it's still frustrating and not fun.
Let's be honest here, some of us are playing to win, not playing to get better at the game. While doing the latter will almost unequivocally lead to the former, most people don't find practice to be fun. They find playing the game fun. Yes, we can focus 100% on practicing to be better players. Or we can slip up and fall back on crutches like queuing because in that instance this, it gets us the win, which is more fun and entertaining than the alternative.
My favorite is when players dont queue up, but instead drop 3 extra production buildings because they dont efficiently produce out of what they have. Not queueing is a part of perfect macro, but to get there you need some infrastructure/framework and convincing yourself that you can afford more units than you can early on in your career is probably worse. Instead rather, you're better off to queue everyone once in a while, and just plain lose because you didnt have enough units. Thats the only way to really tell how much production you need unless you've really crunched the numbers.
Queuing only makes you think you are spending money, so yeah all it does is build a bad habit. Making another nexus/cc/hatch or more unit production buildings would be a better way to keep money low.
On December 15 2010 17:03 imbecile wrote: 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.
The first two sentences demonstrate OP's lack of understanding.
When units are in the queue, that's money that isn't being used. By queuing units, you're immediately putting aside money that can't be used. The faster money is used, the better. That's why high-yield minerals are better than normal minerals.
Regardless of how much money you have, a barracks can only support so much production through the game. If you have a barracks with 4 extra marines always queued during the course of the game, that's 200 minerals missing during every second that barracks has been in play until the end of the game.
On December 15 2010 17:05 beef42 wrote: the thing is though, all the marines you got queued could be made into more barracks instead.
/thread.
BUT: one thing i learned that is very valuable, mainly for protoss:
when you are building colossi, say in a pvp, then it's all about CONSTANT colossus prodution, simply put. it often happened to me, that i would normally macro out of my gateways and then a colossus would pop and i wouldn't have enough money to produce the new one and had to wait for the next 200 gas for example.
that can be avoided, if you queue up the next colossus close to the point where the first one is done. that "deposits" your resources and you insure that you will have the constant production. of course you can also do that "in your head" but it's easier if you queue up short-termed in that case. it also makes your chronoboost more effective, because the second colossus already profits from it, even if you boost when the first one is almost done.
this applies to all high-cost units that you want to priorize over the gateway-"meat" (immortals, phoenix, pretty much everything out of stargate and robo).
using that improved my macro a lot. as for the terran barracks macro, see quote above. no reason to have 2 rax fully queued with marines if you could go ahead, cancel 6 of those and make 2 rax. of course it's sometimes harder in the heat of the game but 100% necessary for success.
I dunno, i think queuing is worse than have low money. Because when you queue units, thats just money that is waiting for a FUTURE event, not a current one. Double queuing is okay, since its a good safety net in case you slip up on your macro, but if you have something around 3 or higher, you could be spending that money to make another unit producing structure to make more at the same time. That, or you could just expand, get more minerals, and build more structures. Even in pro matches, they refuse to queue, even allowing their minerals to get high. TL;DR : Queuing is just wasted money, spend it on something more useful at the current time.
On December 15 2010 17:10 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: I agree, queuing is good. for most players, because it yields you a faster army than not queuing,
Ok I disagree entirely. Queuing won't get a faster army at all. If anything it do the exact opposite. Not this is a fairly extreme example but here is the build order of someone i got matched against last night.
This is 100% what they did. Though, to be fair, it was their placements, and they had clearly never played an RTS before, and had 0 wins in 1's through to 4's :/
Built 2 probes Assimilator on 8 1 probe in gas Pylon on 8 Gateway on 8 Queued 5 zealots immediately.
You can't honestly tell me that queueing those zealots was in any way good for this guy. Yeah his build was terrible and he stopped making probes at....8 but if he didn't queue he could have made another gateway and 5 probs. :/
I think you should keep both in mind all the time, It's not good to not practice something because you think it's above your skill level. I bet you're much closer then you think, keep working on both not queuing and keeping money low, and work on the timings of your production buildings and it will get easy. =)
Sorry to disturb as a new poster (wanna jump to a point but tbh i am a scrub ok i make these mistakes all of them listed here) I got reccomended here for learning. What i see on tl.net is some great post about ghost mech all detailed and stuff and why and bla bla. That moment i thought i dunno if i will ever be good enough to do that, But.. i want to :O. So i buy the game dont get to play alot so i still suck at it QQ.. Then i got some time to play i look back here at the strategy section and this is on here LOL.. I mean this is the shit i get a tumor from how the fuck will actual gamers feel man.. i mean jonny bronze will puke if he reads this and it's on fucking TL.it's bullshit u should not que and not get your minarals stockpile, and if i loose ten times in a row makign that mistake i know. i know period. i mean Are u a troll and go to every porn site and tell em to eat around the bush NO! u just shave the bitch urself and spiit on it OK! u might beat me with ur que and then i'll see ur profile and LOL cause u played 1000 games and i played a 100 And ill still gg sorry for the rant and glhf...
So: "Keep your Money Low" is more important than "Queuing is Bad". There, I said it.
The issue i have with your post is really simple : Of course your oppinion is valued as is everyone elses but your last sentence alone is so fucking stupid(no offence meant). Im not even talking about whether it is right or wrong but just the entitlement to talk in abolutes is really annoying at least to me.
The only statement in your whole post that is woth discussing is this It is easier to learn slowing down on the queuing later than to not having a big enough army.`?
Okay that is your point of view that could make an interesting discussion : Is it okay do do something wrong while working on something different of your game or do you always need to try playing perfectly because in the long run that may get you better results. All the rest of your post can be answered like this ( at least i think it can please correct me if im wrong ) The only time you should be banking any money is when you are maxed , and in that case build more structures to assure a quick reinforcement when a part of your army dies. In any other situation queuing is an indicator that you dont have enough structures to keep your money low . Okay that is the theory part of it . While playing , of course you will miss some cycles , even idras queens have more than 70 energy at the end of a game . Then of course you might have the right amount of structures and a lot of money but that is only because your macro is not perfect and that is something you need to work on. In those cases , will making a similar mistake again (queuing- actually keeping your money high) be okay or should you try to spend the money differently , upgrades for example, or another expansion, because queuing wont get you an army any quicker, unless you forget to produce units again and again But consider this : if you queue all the time how the fuck will you ever learn to tab into your production structures and eventually have good macro? you wont ever train that mechanic that is so vital for any good player
And honestly if you argue like that , dont you think it might be better to ask: what is more important : keeping your money low or is it in some circucumstances okay to queue ?
queuing is bad, queuing a tiny bit later on (instead of losing production time) or at calculated moments (as in you won't spend it in the meantime anyways) is fine.
made units + money not low = spend on infrastructure (tech/rax etc.)
Queuing units gives you perfect macro for the sacrifice of being able to spend that money sunk on something else. For lower tier players, if they aren't going to spend the money that's "floating" around during say, a big battle, then by all means queue your units. A good practice is to queue only 1-2 units at a time during an engagement, or any other time where your multitasking is being put the the test. If your money gets high, queuing past 2-3 units I would say is definitely bad. If you find your money getting high, that just means you don't have the number of production structures you should. All in all, what I'm trying to say is that queueing a few units helps to maximize the number of things you can do at once.
Even if you're not good enough to 100% relinquish queuing, it provides a crutch which inhibits progress. APM too low? no problem, I've got 3 rounds of unit production taken care of. If you slowly start working your way away from queuing, you'll find that first of all you'll get the hang of it, and second of all, your hand speed will increase drastically, along with your game sense and build timings. Seems like a sweet deal to me
[QUOTE]On December 16 2010 02:05 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: [QUOTE]On December 16 2010 02:00 gangstarr wrote: Essentially, if you have 4 marines queued, you could have made one marine and also built a barracks. There should be no opportunity to queue, and if there is: build another unit producing structure.[/QUOTE]If you have infinite APM to spare maybe. Making a baracks with an SCV requires APM, you have to go back to your base and do that. Queuing up a unit requires less APM. And APM is a resource, you can only do so many things and sometimes microing a battle to come out on top, which can be done simultaneously with queuing, instead of going bac kto your base during that battle, is simply more optimal
While my APM isn't that great, it sits somewhere around 100 without much spam. I am able to micro an army and also build unit producing structures pretty easily. Hotkeys make multitasking rather manageable, but if you are unable to multitask and build structures while producing units and microing an army, then by all means continue to queue. But you just admitted to having bad APM and the inability to play efficiently, hence your need to queue units.
Side note: If your micro suffers while building unit producing structures you will at the very least be able to reproduce the units you lost with the buildings you created.
On December 16 2010 11:03 Erandorr wrote: The issue i have with your post is really simple : Of course your oppinion is valued as is everyone elses but your last sentence alone is so fucking stupid(no offence meant). Im not even talking about whether it is right or wrong but just the entitlement to talk in abolutes is really annoying at least to me.
Stop it with that wishy washy. You think I'm wrong, and that's that.
On December 16 2010 11:03 Erandorr wrote: Okay that is your point of view that could make an interesting discussion : Is it okay do do something wrong while working on something different of your game or do you always need to try playing perfectly because in the long run that may get you better results.
That's exactly the point. Basic macro mechanics and builds can be trained against the computer. If you play on ladder, the first thing you need to learn is to watch your back at any time, because of all those bastards
Now the main argument everyone and you has against queuing is, that in an ideal world you will never have to queue and you will have an optimal economy, and you should aspire to that ideal to become better. In general a good advice, that's why that rule exists. My post was merely to point out, that sometimes you need to make exceptions to that rule, in order to cover other aspects of the game as well. My post was full of caveats, if you have read it.
You make concessions in every aspect of the game: You lose units in battle, although in an ideal world with perfect control you never would. Yet, in a typical game, the majority of all units will die, even for the winner. No one gets all upset and ranty about this. You never have perfect information on your opponent, although in a perfect world you would. Yet, in a typical game you always will have to rely in indirect reasoning and guessing. No one seems to be particularly bothered by this.
But when I say, that under certain very narrow circumstances it is ok to queue a little, and that it might help with developing and performing some other aspects of the game, all hell breaks lose.
Of course I was kinda expecting that. Blind rule followers are always so easy to upset. That's why I made that post. A little trolling, and a little making people think and examine the reasons for that rule.
In the end it's all just trade offs. Because battles and skirmishes are happening, because you have to balance the resources and what you need in a game, everyone will inevitably miss a step, because the result of not paying attention to a battle is almost always worse than missing a bit of production. Perfect macro you can have when you play without opponent.
The question now is, how to deal with those excess resources, that inevitably will appear sooner or later (if you are good, later).
One way can be to invest them into exess production ... but that will be idle capacity for most of the game, useless sunken cost. Only helps you to remax fast if you lose a lot and cover up later macro mishaps.
Or you can invest it into attention capacity and force slip-ups and mistakes in in your opponent, make him lose more units, ground building etc. and and miss production, because he has to split his attention, and you don't.
So many says it's bad, but barely ANYONE manages to keep their money low and their production running all the time. If you simply want to get better results but not aiming for top diamond it's a good idea to queue units in many situations.
On December 15 2010 17:10 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: I agree, queuing is good. for most players, because it yields you a faster army than not queuing,
Ok I disagree entirely. Queuing won't get a faster army at all. If anything it do the exact opposite. Not this is a fairly extreme example but here is the build order of someone i got matched against last night.
This is 100% what they did. Though, to be fair, it was their placements, and they had clearly never played an RTS before, and had 0 wins in 1's through to 4's :/
Built 2 probes Assimilator on 8 1 probe in gas Pylon on 8 Gateway on 8 Queued 5 zealots immediately.
You can't honestly tell me that queueing those zealots was in any way good for this guy. Yeah his build was terrible and he stopped making probes at....8 but if he didn't queue he could have made another gateway and 5 probs. :/
That is pretty much a straw man. It would be like me saying 'Yeah, this guy made one zealot the entire match, if he queued he would have 5'
Of course I didn't mean it like that.
And queuing will get you a faster army than not queuing for most players, because it stops idle time. Let's face it, most people will just get idle time if they don't queue. That's the thing you avoid by queuing.
On December 16 2010 11:03 Erandorr wrote: The issue i have with your post is really simple : Of course your oppinion is valued as is everyone elses but your last sentence alone is so fucking stupid(no offence meant). Im not even talking about whether it is right or wrong but just the entitlement to talk in abolutes is really annoying at least to me.
Stop it with that wishy washy. You think I'm wrong, and that's that.
On December 16 2010 11:03 Erandorr wrote: Okay that is your point of view that could make an interesting discussion : Is it okay do do something wrong while working on something different of your game or do you always need to try playing perfectly because in the long run that may get you better results.
That's exactly the point. Basic macro mechanics and builds can be trained against the computer. If you play on ladder, the first thing you need to learn is to watch your back at any time, because of all those bastards
Now the main argument everyone and you has against queuing is, that in an ideal world you will never have to queue and you will have an optimal economy, and you should aspire to that ideal to become better. In general a good advice, that's why that rule exists. My post was merely to point out, that sometimes you need to make exceptions to that rule, in order to cover other aspects of the game as well. My post was full of caveats, if you have read it.
You make concessions in every aspect of the game: You lose units in battle, although in an ideal world with perfect control you never would. Yet, in a typical game, the majority of all units will die, even for the winner. No one gets all upset and ranty about this. You never have perfect information on your opponent, although in a perfect world you would. Yet, in a typical game you always will have to rely in indirect reasoning and guessing. No one seems to be particularly bothered by this.
But when I say, that under certain very narrow circumstances it is ok to queue a little, and that it might help with developing and performing some other aspects of the game, all hell breaks lose.
Of course I was kinda expecting that. Blind rule followers are always so easy to upset. That's why I made that post. A little trolling, and a little making people think and examine the reasons for that rule.
In the end it's all just trade offs. Because battles and skirmishes are happening, because you have to balance the resources and what you need in a game, everyone will inevitably miss a step, because the result of not paying attention to a battle is almost always worse than missing a bit of production. Perfect macro you can have when you play without opponent.
The question now is, how to deal with those excess resources, that inevitably will appear sooner or later (if you are good, later).
Okay this sounds far better than what you said in your OP =) I am absolutly fine with how you formultaed it now but you started a 11 page discussion that could have been easily avoided if you had said what you wrote know instead of at the beginning . But I for example pride myself for .. well kind of okay macro and i learned that by following these seemingly stupid rules even when it meant losing a game. I did this because i realized that i honestly should not care too much about a loss when it teaches me more than a win with bad habits might. But again that for me is a point worth discussing, so why not create a thread with that interesting question instead of " a little trolling" ?
Okay this sounds far better than what you said in your OP =) I am absolutly fine with how you formultaed it now but you started a 11 page discussion that could have been easily avoided if you had said what you wrote know instead of at the beginning
I said at the first page 'I think you guys are misreading his point', and many others followed that said the same, enough people understood it that actually read the post rather that stumbling on the sentence 'queuing is good' and then not reading on any more.
I and others have also already explained that while indeed not queuing up and being on top of it is the ideal situation, it's not realistic to expect yourself to be able to do that. What's more, not queuing up is done before being on top of it. So you basically base your decision on the assumption that you're not going to fail or make errors in the future, kind of risky. It's basically walking into battle with the exact number of high templar you need with perfect micro, because any extra high templar is surely a waste of money? But I'd rather have a couple extra because I like to account for my own failures and I know that it's quite possible that I miss a storm.
This is also the reason that I queue, I know that in the future there will be a time that I will make an error. This doesn't mean that I don't try to maintain my probe queue to be at 3 probes (depending on the phase of the game.), but it means that if I don't meet this goal, I have something to fall back on, sure, it cost me 100 minerals which I could have spent on a zealot at that point. But I find playing it safe and having the assurance that my probe production will probably never stop worth more than a single zealot. And in the end it will pay me those 100 minerals back.
I have many times reviewed replays and said, christ, 3 marauders 2 marines queued, that is a frikking command centre.
and often queueing loses games, in that instead of expanding your production facilities to match your income, you queue, so end up fighting 6 rax off 3 rax (in terms of production capacity)
However, I always queue one extra scv. i.e. 1 building and one queued after, as otherwise I need to skip to my command centre every 17 seconds, exactly.
With that 50 mineral investment, I can have my 25ish scvs at 7 minutes, withoug it I end up with 19.
I mean really am I to skip back to my cc every 17 seconds exactly?
I agree that queuing can help a player to spend the money. It also gives him the opportunity to micro a battle without caring about rebuilding his units fast enough. Of course it's not optimal to use the queue. But for a beginner I think it's worse to pass them. In the end, everyone should decide for himself.
I just can't understand this thread... Keeping your money low means not queueing. Queued dudes ARE unspent resources.
If you find yourself queueing, build another building, and don't worry about idle buildings, worry about money. If you're queued it means you couldn't spend all your money fast enough.. so why spend your money even slower? If you have more than 400 resources, why not just throw down a CC, THEN queue up??? I don't worry if my money is high sometimes, I just make sure that I get to 0 resources at some point after 100 food, and that's always a good time to push because my army is as big as it could be at this time, so if my opponent has any stored up money (and he probably does) I have the advantage.
If you actually expand when you attack, like you should, then any extra buildings just would have been built earlier than you needed them, but its okay, because you are at least keeping your money low.
Haven't gotten a chance to play for a few days, but usually by the time I'm on 9-12 rax, I don't mind queuing up 60-70 marines even because I'm not going to realistically go to 20 rax (not sustainable if I want to wall off with buildings they might as well be PFs).
T on 4-5 base has enough income that with any bit of micro, I can't be bothered with more than 15-20 production structures total, and I always prefer to reinforce in almost every situation with marine medivac and tank/hellion after my initial force breaks theirs. This is because 12 rax pumping marines can out reinforce almost anyone and lets me keep pressure up after trading armies. At that point I'd rather micro the marines and just keep them coming rather than worry about whether they could be coming out a couple more at a time...
I know that logically 20 rax would be even better but to keep 20 rax pumping you've already won...
IMO follow the Jinro philosophy of getting better. Play the game in the most efficient way possible and learn the proper ins and outs of every aspect of the game early, middle, and late including all of the mechanical elements thereof.
If you get all this nailed down, you might be not be terribly good early on, but it will inevitably pay dividends later on (read: reaching RO4 in GSL).
The reason why people are in the lower leagues is usually BECAUSE of poor macro. Why someone would want to compound the issue by ignoring one of the most important rules of macro improvement in favor of faux satisfaction of another is initially beyond me.
I can see the argument of focusing on one thing at a time. I can get behind that as long as the immediate next step is to put both together in symphony. But if you're playing 50 some odd games with macro via queuing units, you're stepping into bad-habits-becoming-second-nature territory IMO.
But alas, everyone is different. I just prefer the route of doing things right from the beginning even if that means having a few missteps here and there.
Okay this sounds far better than what you said in your OP =)
I'll echo this sentiment. I think people got the wrong impression based on the OP that the argument wasn't being backed up by sufficient reasoning. I'd invite everyone to read your post above on this page to get a 100% better idea of what you're saying.
The fact that people advocate queuing is a sign that the quality of these forums is going to hell..
Don't queue. I don't care if you're worried about idling structures. If you're queuing to spend your money then you should be adding on more unit producing structures and producing better instead, not hiding your money away and not producing properly.
There is no excuse for queuing. Even a bronze player can go "shit my money's really high" and toss down 4-5 more barracks instead of pressing 5 dadadadadaaaa or something. Just don't do it, it's a terrible habbit.
Small edit: Though I feel you should micro very minimally until your macro is very good (say low diamond), if you DO feel you're going to get involved heavily in a battle add rax/factories and queue a little bit before battle so your money IS being spent, but in the majority of cases, queueing is a big no-no, and even above I don't care how slow your hands are you can press your hotkey and make units. Even here, only queue minimally. For me, it would be making one more set of units around when my units are half done, then going and doing some marine-split or heavy kitting vs banelings, or something similar that's very demanding, but for 95% of the game you should be starting your next unit at 85-90%+ the current units completion, no sooner.
I'm not advocating queuing, what I was trying to say is that at a certain point in the game, usually around the time you are on 4-5 bases, adding more structures is just unsustainable because there is no way you could fund all of them at once (your first bases will start mining out if not already). At that point I'd rather stay with 15-20 structures that I can support continuously than put even more structures down if those structures are only ever going to be used for 2-3 rounds of production.
Then again having 10 rax go up in one of my thirds or fourths has saved me before when my opponent on less bases thinks he just won a base trade and I come in with 50 marines a couple of minutes later to mop up.
On December 17 2010 02:30 1a2a3aPro wrote: The fact that people advocate queuing is a sign that the quality of these forums is going to hell..
If you don't question rules, and don't ask why those are the rules, you don't need a forum in the first place, just a checklist.
If you don't understand why a rule is a rule, you won't know why to follow it, and you won't know when to not follow it.
Just being able to rattle down mantras doesn't mean you have an understanding of the game. It means you have a vocabulary, but no grammar to use it in a way that makes sense.
On December 16 2010 08:53 sas911 wrote: ..... not queueing is just asking a ridiculous amount out of every player who's in gold and under. When you have a rax with a reactor and you're pumping marines, chances are, that you'll end up failing by forgetting to constantly produce. By queueing up, sure you lose minerals at that moment, but technically after that period of time is over, you have the minerals again. At least you're constantly producing units. When I'm playing protoss, I queue up probes. I'm too busy trying to determine tech paths, building units out of warp gates (well no queue there duh). I don't want to be like "oh shit i forgot to build probes, and now my economy is totally screwed". Sure I lose 100 minerals because I queued up 2 extra probes, but if I don't have the apm to support it, I shouldn't.
It's like microing. Some beginners put way too much value on that. Sure, you can squeeze out a few units here and there, and maybe it'll help you win battles. But if you're microing and your apm doesn't allow you to continue unit production, avoid supply caps, and continue teching, then you're better off a-moving and having a solid macro.
Actually, it's practically almost exactly like micro. Sure, everyone who gets good HAS to learn to micro, but in the end, if you just concentrate on micro in the beginning, you will be lacking in the other more fundamental and important areas. And in the end it's usually never the reason you lose. The reason you lose is because you forgot to expand, didn't scout properly, didn't create any defense in time, made bad strategy decisions. You didn't lose because you built a gateway 10 seconds after, because you queued up 2 probes.
No. Being able to make units constantly without queueing is as fundamental as it gets. If you decide not to do things because you "don't have the APM" (very misleading phrase), your effective APM will not improve. APM is not levels in a role playing game, you do not play x games of starcraft and magically increase it from 40 to 100 or whatever.
Learning macro comes before strategy because there is no such strategy as "SuperGosu's No-unit timing push", and macro comes before micro because you cannot micro no units. The units have to be made, and then you can do things with them. I mean obviously you need some sort of basic plan because you have to figure out what production structures you're going to make and a very flexible, ballpark goal of when you want to expand, but beyond that you gotta realize that if you put Gary Kasparov against an average dedicated chess hobbyist but sporadically take random pieces from him throughout the game, he's not going to be able to strategize his way into a victory.
On December 16 2010 08:53 sas911 wrote: ..... not queueing is just asking a ridiculous amount out of every player who's in gold and under. When you have a rax with a reactor and you're pumping marines, chances are, that you'll end up failing by forgetting to constantly produce. By queueing up, sure you lose minerals at that moment, but technically after that period of time is over, you have the minerals again. At least you're constantly producing units. When I'm playing protoss, I queue up probes. I'm too busy trying to determine tech paths, building units out of warp gates (well no queue there duh). I don't want to be like "oh shit i forgot to build probes, and now my economy is totally screwed". Sure I lose 100 minerals because I queued up 2 extra probes, but if I don't have the apm to support it, I shouldn't.
It's like microing. Some beginners put way too much value on that. Sure, you can squeeze out a few units here and there, and maybe it'll help you win battles. But if you're microing and your apm doesn't allow you to continue unit production, avoid supply caps, and continue teching, then you're better off a-moving and having a solid macro.
Actually, it's practically almost exactly like micro. Sure, everyone who gets good HAS to learn to micro, but in the end, if you just concentrate on micro in the beginning, you will be lacking in the other more fundamental and important areas. And in the end it's usually never the reason you lose. The reason you lose is because you forgot to expand, didn't scout properly, didn't create any defense in time, made bad strategy decisions. You didn't lose because you built a gateway 10 seconds after, because you queued up 2 probes.
this is just wrong. if a gold and under players told me this i would just say 'stick with ONE tech plan'.players who are GOLD and under would most likely struggle with the 'very hard AI', therefore in your example of playing protoss, you should say 'ok i can't think about tech patterns and macro up at the same time, so how about i just make nothing but gateway units'. practice that, your macro will become better.
your apm WILL go up if you practice like this because your fingers will just naturally retain muscle memory and you will be doing things like its second nature.
building a gateway 10 seconds late, getting every other probe out 4 seconds late adds up, especially because these things are the ones that ALLOW you to build units. if you start fucking up on a very fundamental level, then your problems will magnify themselves dramatically in the actual game (in fact much moreso than micro).
edit: the only time it is acceptable to queue is when there is NOTHING else you can be doing with your money, because inevitably you will build some resource 'glut' that occurs naturally due to unit travel time to unexpected actions (buildings getting destroyed etc...) in which case yes it is smart to queue
queueing also does not give you good 'macro'. in fact just the opposite, macro embodies MORE than just spending your money it mainly just means making good economic decisions throughout the game. q'ing just gives you the illusion that your money is low.
I tend to do the opposite to what is suggested in this thread. I will always make more production facilities than I can sustain. Especially as protoss.
When you're not a top level player, you can throw away 150 minerals in seconds with bad micro. I prefer to spend most of my APM making sure my micro is good enough, and then I can miss a few macro timings (e.g. while i'm microing) and I still spend all my money when I come back to my base.
For example, a game I played recently I was on 3 bases and had produced 24 warp gates. I have no idea how many warp gates 3 bases can sustain but it certainly isn't 24 of them. When i started my attack, I had 0 money as I could easily produce more than my production capabilities. While I was attacking, I wasn't macroing at all. Lots of sentries, lots of blinking stalkers to micro around. By the time my attack finished, I had destroyed his army, but hadn't really got much backup. I had around 2000 minerals + gas by the time i went back to macro. This was instantly spent again...
I knew my opponent couldn't produce so fast, so at that point I just kept A moving my units. Always had about 6 warp gates free off of cooldown, but it was just so easy to overwhelm him. Money always stayed at 0 while macroing.
Queuing is a bad idea, but can sometimes be useful to queue up a max of 2 units per building (if they are cheap units). You can often claw back the bad macro with some solid micro as long as you're only talking about a couple of units.
On December 17 2010 03:36 AcidReniX wrote: I tend to do the opposite to what is suggested in this thread. I will always make more production facilities than I can sustain. Especially as protoss.
When you're not a top level player, you can throw away 150 minerals in seconds with bad micro. I prefer to spend most of my APM making sure my micro is good enough, and then I can miss a few macro timings (e.g. while i'm microing) and I still spend all my money when I come back to my base.
For example, a game I played recently I was on 3 bases and had produced 24 warp gates. I have no idea how many warp gates 3 bases can sustain but it certainly isn't 24 of them. When i started my attack, I had 0 money as I could easily produce more than my production capabilities. While I was attacking, I wasn't macroing at all. Lots of sentries, lots of blinking stalkers to micro around. By the time my attack finished, I had destroyed his army, but hadn't really got much backup. I had around 2000 minerals + gas by the time i went back to macro. This was instantly spent again...
I knew my opponent couldn't produce so fast, so at that point I just kept A moving my units. Always had about 6 warp gates free off of cooldown, but it was just so easy to overwhelm him. Money always stayed at 0 while macroing.
Queuing is a bad idea, but can sometimes be useful to queue up a max of 2 units per building (if they are cheap units). You can often claw back the bad macro with some solid micro as long as you're only talking about a couple of units.
its really quite easy to figure as protoss. basically a tech structure is equivalent to two gateways, so one base can support four gateways at max production/saturation or 2 gate/robo or 2 gate/star. so you just multiply this.
in the late game its useful to have more structures though (if your getting near max level food) to reinforce better.
On December 17 2010 02:30 1a2a3aPro wrote: The fact that people advocate queuing is a sign that the quality of these forums is going to hell..
If you don't understand why a rule is a rule, you won't know why to follow it, and you won't know when to not follow it.
Yes, but this particular rule follows from a pretty basic fundamental idea. Commonly held beliefs are commonly held because of good reasons.
The situation you describe is that you have extra resources. you can spend this on:
1) upgrades or units. Lets say you can't, because all your buildings are currently busy. 2) queueing upgrades or units. 3) building tech/production building or expanding 4) not building anything and let your money build up
if you spend your money first on queueing and then building, pretty much the only result is that your building comes out later, since queueing doesn't actually make your units come out earlier. Plus, if you build a production facility, that helps keep your resources lower in the future.
So your choices are between (all choices assuming you're still building units without queueing):
queuing more units >> units come out same time, your next building is slower building a structure >> units come out same time, your next building is faster saving up resources >> units come out same time, your next building does not exist
Basically your OP says that choice 1 is better than choice 3. Do you see the problem now?
Footnote: [building a structure] doesn't mean "oh, i have extra minerals, i should build 6 barracks on one base" if you already have a suitable number of production facilities, you should be building an expansion (or perhaps defense if you think you're about to get attacked, since if you have a lot of resources, you're probably behind in army count)
TL;DR Having a full que of units is the same as not using your minerals. For example if you are toss and you fill a gateway full of zealots you're not using 400 minerals for the amount of time it would take to get all those zealots out. In starcraft and most rts games you first need to secure enough income and then you need to use the money generated to build up an army, keeping your money low just to keep your money low is not good.
Another way to look at it is that there's actually no decision of whether or not to queue. It's a mythical scenario.
You're imagining a situation where you're about to go into some kind of intense battle and you can either queue up units and keep producing automatically while you micro furiously to gain an advantage in the battle, or you can try to macro during the battle and stand a high chance of either misclicking your units or making the wrong thing from your buildings or failing to make anything, or getting supply blocked.
This situation doesn't exist. After you start units building out of all your structures and make supply if you need to, you're out of money. You can't actually queue because you have no money to do so. If you're not very good at hotkeys and the rhythm of making stuff, your money might build up during the battle or after the battle if you supply block yourself.
At this point, you have the choice to queue up some guys if you want to. Suppose you were at 800 minerals after the battle, then you started guys building and got down to 400, and then you queued up guys and now you're at 0. Ok, so your money is down. 20 seconds later, your first round of guys finishes. Congratulations, you're at 400 minerals again, and all your structures are busy! You actually did NOTHING to alleviate your mineral floating problem, and if you were building workers on one or more non-saturated bases, it's actually worse now, you're probably at 450 or something.
I agree with AcidRain that if you need to 5gate on one base or 8-9gate on two bases to catch up on production, do it! However, if you find that you need to make something crazy like four more gates all at once to have any hope of getting your money down (and you're not at max supply), it's actually reasonable to just surrender, because anything that happens past that point is Bizarro Starcraft and the things that you can and can't do are not going to bear much resemblance to the situations that arise in a game where you're macroing smoothly. Sure you might win if your opponent screws up even more than you did, but mostly the rest of the game is going to be a waste of everyone's time in terms of learning anything or getting better.
its really quite easy to figure as protoss. basically a tech structure is equivalent to two gateways, so one base can support four gateways at max production/saturation or 2 gate/robo or 2 gate/star. so you just multiply this.
This is completely nonsense. And even if this were true, it would be screwed from the moment the phoenix build time and observer cost will be buffed in 1.2.0.. and it means that it wasn't true before the zealot build time nerf.
It really isn't this easy and clear cut, it also depends on what the unit mix you're going after is. If you go zealot + stalker from 4gate alone on two gas, you will simply stockpile gas that can be used to tech to dark shrine or high templar or what-not. 3gate allows for faster tech. 2gate stargate is also reasonably techy, if you go 3gate stargate you can tech less well. A base can support 3gate and 2 stargates depending on what you warp in and what the unit composition is.
These rules are very rough approximates, ultimately, you can't math it out, it depends on so many factors including the map you play and your opponent, if you wall of you lose more mining time and all that, you have to do this on feeling in the end.
On December 17 2010 02:30 1a2a3aPro wrote: The fact that people advocate queuing is a sign that the quality of these forums is going to hell..
If you don't question rules, and don't ask why those are the rules, you don't need a forum in the first place, just a checklist.
If you don't understand why a rule is a rule, you won't know why to follow it, and you won't know when to not follow it.
Just being able to rattle down mantras doesn't mean you have an understanding of the game. It means you have a vocabulary, but no grammar to use it in a way that makes sense.
You question something then when presented with solid reasoning why the rule is better than your questions you dismiss that and continue along with your argument. It's bad , deal with it.
its really quite easy to figure as protoss. basically a tech structure is equivalent to two gateways, so one base can support four gateways at max production/saturation or 2 gate/robo or 2 gate/star. so you just multiply this.
This is completely nonsense. And even if this were true, it would be screwed from the moment the phoenix build time and observer cost will be buffed in 1.2.0.. and it means that it wasn't true before the zealot build time nerf.
It really isn't this easy and clear cut, it also depends on what the unit mix you're going after is. If you go zealot + stalker from 4gate alone on two gas, you will simply stockpile gas that can be used to tech to dark shrine or high templar or what-not. 3gate allows for faster tech. 2gate stargate is also reasonably techy, if you go 3gate stargate you can tech less well. A base can support 3gate and 2 stargates depending on what you warp in and what the unit composition is.
These rules are very rough approximates, ultimately, you can't math it out, it depends on so many factors including the map you play and your opponent, if you wall of you lose more mining time and all that, you have to do this on feeling in the end.
i didnt say what units you are producing, just the basic structures you can get, of course depending on how you got your gas/minerals, you can change this, but the guy was asking about how many you can support off of one base and how to go about figuring that out.
you can definitely math it out, you can make a lot of decent decisions (until probably mid diamond) purely from an economic perspective. in fact you can win a large % of your games up until that level just making the unit that makes the most sense to make depending on your level of money.
On December 16 2010 08:53 sas911 wrote: ..... not queueing is just asking a ridiculous amount out of every player who's in gold and under. When you have a rax with a reactor and you're pumping marines, chances are, that you'll end up failing by forgetting to constantly produce. By queueing up, sure you lose minerals at that moment, but technically after that period of time is over, you have the minerals again. At least you're constantly producing units. When I'm playing protoss, I queue up probes. I'm too busy trying to determine tech paths, building units out of warp gates (well no queue there duh). I don't want to be like "oh shit i forgot to build probes, and now my economy is totally screwed". Sure I lose 100 minerals because I queued up 2 extra probes, but if I don't have the apm to support it, I shouldn't.
It's like microing. Some beginners put way too much value on that. Sure, you can squeeze out a few units here and there, and maybe it'll help you win battles. But if you're microing and your apm doesn't allow you to continue unit production, avoid supply caps, and continue teching, then you're better off a-moving and having a solid macro.
Actually, it's practically almost exactly like micro. Sure, everyone who gets good HAS to learn to micro, but in the end, if you just concentrate on micro in the beginning, you will be lacking in the other more fundamental and important areas. And in the end it's usually never the reason you lose. The reason you lose is because you forgot to expand, didn't scout properly, didn't create any defense in time, made bad strategy decisions. You didn't lose because you built a gateway 10 seconds after, because you queued up 2 probes.
this is just wrong. if a gold and under players told me this i would just say 'stick with ONE tech plan'.players who are GOLD and under would most likely struggle with the 'very hard AI',
I think that is a pretty brave statement haha.. I agree mostly with the argument against queuing - money in the queue is the same as money in the bank; neither of which help you. I struggle to macro during big battles while i am microing units. So before i engage i try queue up barracks to reinforce my army. This isn't ideal but it is because my mechanics aren't where they need to be - as i have gotten better at the game i have started to do this less and "tap" my production building hotkey mid battle just to check up on things.
It is that sort of progression that is not so terrible - but if you start queuing units from the beginning and that becomes a habit then that is when it is bad.. I think a lot of people are getting stuck on the title of the thread rather than reading the actual content. Queuing units is bad - true, no doubt about it. But if your mechanics can't support the alternative queuing units is less bad than not macroing at all (as long as you are willing to improve and get away from queuing)
On December 16 2010 08:53 sas911 wrote: ..... not queueing is just asking a ridiculous amount out of every player who's in gold and under. When you have a rax with a reactor and you're pumping marines, chances are, that you'll end up failing by forgetting to constantly produce. By queueing up, sure you lose minerals at that moment, but technically after that period of time is over, you have the minerals again. At least you're constantly producing units. When I'm playing protoss, I queue up probes. I'm too busy trying to determine tech paths, building units out of warp gates (well no queue there duh). I don't want to be like "oh shit i forgot to build probes, and now my economy is totally screwed". Sure I lose 100 minerals because I queued up 2 extra probes, but if I don't have the apm to support it, I shouldn't.
It's like microing. Some beginners put way too much value on that. Sure, you can squeeze out a few units here and there, and maybe it'll help you win battles. But if you're microing and your apm doesn't allow you to continue unit production, avoid supply caps, and continue teching, then you're better off a-moving and having a solid macro.
Actually, it's practically almost exactly like micro. Sure, everyone who gets good HAS to learn to micro, but in the end, if you just concentrate on micro in the beginning, you will be lacking in the other more fundamental and important areas. And in the end it's usually never the reason you lose. The reason you lose is because you forgot to expand, didn't scout properly, didn't create any defense in time, made bad strategy decisions. You didn't lose because you built a gateway 10 seconds after, because you queued up 2 probes.
this is just wrong. if a gold and under players told me this i would just say 'stick with ONE tech plan'.players who are GOLD and under would most likely struggle with the 'very hard AI',
I think that is a pretty brave statement haha.. I agree mostly with the argument against queuing - money in the queue is the same as money in the bank; neither of which help you. I struggle to macro during big battles while i am microing units. So before i engage i try queue up barracks to reinforce my army. This isn't ideal but it is because my mechanics aren't where they need to be - as i have gotten better at the game i have started to do this less and "tap" my production building hotkey mid battle just to check up on things.
It is that sort of progression that is not so terrible - but if you start queuing units from the beginning and that becomes a habit then that is when it is bad.. I think a lot of people are getting stuck on the title of the thread rather than reading the actual content. Queuing units is bad - true, no doubt about it. But if your mechanics can't support the alternative queuing units is less bad than not macroing at all (as long as you are willing to improve and get away from queuing)
then you should just work on your mechanics. i've been helping my roommate get better at sc2, who had very little RTS/competitive gaming experience at all, with my instructing him on what to do every step of the way, and he's made a lot of progress simply by using the same build order every time.
you can solve problems like the ones you are describing by just practicing other ways of macroing, for example using shift queuing for movement across a map and watching the minimap so that you can macro maximum time while attacking. when you hear the sound 'your units are under attack', press spacebar and take a look at what's happening, if its a battle you know you will win outright just keep on macroing, if its a close situation then look at your army.
and i really can't imagine someone with just absolutely horrid APM, if you have like 50-70 apm, then you have enough apm to do macro up pretty well without completely ignoring all of your units.
i think that level of apm is pretty reasonable for anyone who can type 50 wpm (which is pretty slow tbh)
On December 16 2010 08:53 sas911 wrote: ..... not queueing is just asking a ridiculous amount out of every player who's in gold and under. When you have a rax with a reactor and you're pumping marines, chances are, that you'll end up failing by forgetting to constantly produce. By queueing up, sure you lose minerals at that moment, but technically after that period of time is over, you have the minerals again. At least you're constantly producing units. When I'm playing protoss, I queue up probes. I'm too busy trying to determine tech paths, building units out of warp gates (well no queue there duh). I don't want to be like "oh shit i forgot to build probes, and now my economy is totally screwed". Sure I lose 100 minerals because I queued up 2 extra probes, but if I don't have the apm to support it, I shouldn't.
It's like microing. Some beginners put way too much value on that. Sure, you can squeeze out a few units here and there, and maybe it'll help you win battles. But if you're microing and your apm doesn't allow you to continue unit production, avoid supply caps, and continue teching, then you're better off a-moving and having a solid macro.
Actually, it's practically almost exactly like micro. Sure, everyone who gets good HAS to learn to micro, but in the end, if you just concentrate on micro in the beginning, you will be lacking in the other more fundamental and important areas. And in the end it's usually never the reason you lose. The reason you lose is because you forgot to expand, didn't scout properly, didn't create any defense in time, made bad strategy decisions. You didn't lose because you built a gateway 10 seconds after, because you queued up 2 probes.
this is just wrong. if a gold and under players told me this i would just say 'stick with ONE tech plan'.players who are GOLD and under would most likely struggle with the 'very hard AI',
But if your mechanics can't support the alternative queuing units is less bad than not macroing at all (as long as you are willing to improve and get away from queuing)
You still haven't addressed the option of simply making more production structures. Also, you can't get away from queueing by queueing, it's like saying it's okay for an alchoholic to drink as long as they're willing to change at some nebulous point in the future (ok that's an extreme example but I can't think of a better one)
So: "Keep your Money Low" is more important than "Queuing is Bad". There, I said it.
The issue i have with your post is really simple : Of course your oppinion is valued as is everyone elses but your last sentence alone is so fucking stupid(no offence meant). Im not even talking about whether it is right or wrong but just the entitlement to talk in abolutes is really annoying at least to me.
The only statement in your whole post that is woth discussing is this It is easier to learn slowing down on the queuing later than to not having a big enough army.`?
Okay that is your point of view that could make an interesting discussion : Is it okay do do something wrong while working on something different of your game or do you always need to try playing perfectly because in the long run that may get you better results. All the rest of your post can be answered like this ( at least i think it can please correct me if im wrong ) The only time you should be banking any money is when you are maxed , and in that case build more structures to assure a quick reinforcement when a part of your army dies. In any other situation queuing is an indicator that you dont have enough structures to keep your money low . Okay that is the theory part of it . While playing , of course you will miss some cycles , even idras queens have more than 70 energy at the end of a game . Then of course you might have the right amount of structures and a lot of money but that is only because your macro is not perfect and that is something you need to work on. In those cases , will making a similar mistake again (queuing- actually keeping your money high) be okay or should you try to spend the money differently , upgrades for example, or another expansion, because queuing wont get you an army any quicker, unless you forget to produce units again and again But consider this : if you queue all the time how the fuck will you ever learn to tab into your production structures and eventually have good macro? you wont ever train that mechanic that is so vital for any good player
And honestly if you argue like that , dont you think it might be better to ask: what is more important : keeping your money low or is it in some circucumstances okay to queue ?
/rant God that felt good =)
<3
Anyway. Make more unit production buildings, and expos, money better spent. imo
Developing bad habits to win at low levels isn't worth it. Sure you may win, but once you reach a high level you're going to have to learn to keep your money low anyway. It's almost like a waste of time.
So: "Keep your Money Low" is more important than "Queuing is Bad". There, I said it.
The issue i have with your post is really simple : Of course your oppinion is valued as is everyone elses but your last sentence alone is so fucking stupid(no offence meant). Im not even talking about whether it is right or wrong but just the entitlement to talk in abolutes is really annoying at least to me.
The only statement in your whole post that is woth discussing is this It is easier to learn slowing down on the queuing later than to not having a big enough army.`?
Okay that is your point of view that could make an interesting discussion : Is it okay do do something wrong while working on something different of your game or do you always need to try playing perfectly because in the long run that may get you better results. All the rest of your post can be answered like this ( at least i think it can please correct me if im wrong ) The only time you should be banking any money is when you are maxed , and in that case build more structures to assure a quick reinforcement when a part of your army dies. In any other situation queuing is an indicator that you dont have enough structures to keep your money low . Okay that is the theory part of it . While playing , of course you will miss some cycles , even idras queens have more than 70 energy at the end of a game . Then of course you might have the right amount of structures and a lot of money but that is only because your macro is not perfect and that is something you need to work on. In those cases , will making a similar mistake again (queuing- actually keeping your money high) be okay or should you try to spend the money differently , upgrades for example, or another expansion, because queuing wont get you an army any quicker, unless you forget to produce units again and again But consider this : if you queue all the time how the fuck will you ever learn to tab into your production structures and eventually have good macro? you wont ever train that mechanic that is so vital for any good player
And honestly if you argue like that , dont you think it might be better to ask: what is more important : keeping your money low or is it in some circucumstances okay to queue ?
/rant God that felt good =)
<3
Anyway. Make more unit production buildings, and expos, money better spent. imo
Basically what he is saying is that.
Ok, I'm going to play bad. Queueing units is bad and so is having high money. I'm not good at macroing, but I don't want to work on that right now, I would rather work on some other thing, therefore I am going to queue units to keep my money low. Even Idra needs to work on his macro, no one is perfect. But is idra going to skip making queens because his macro isn't perfect? Absolutely not. Is idra going to make 3 extra production hatches? No way. Even if idra knew that he would have more units if he made an extra production hatch, he realizes that doing so will prohibit him from advancing and learning.
In chess, it's a bad idea to move your queen out early (in general), but there are some players in the lower levels who know some great tricks with queens so they put them out as fast as possible and win games. When they lose, they complain it was because their opponent tricked them or that he played perfectly, etc, but the reason he can't advance is because he plays bad and doesn't know how to play without using his queen.
Even if you CAN win games more often by queueing, it is a terrible terrible idea. It is much easier when watching a replay to look at your mineral count and say "wow i should have made more production buildings" then try to figure out you were queueing too much. If you get into the habit of queueing, it's hard to break. So you have an option 1. Queue your units and win games until you are gold/platinum and then practice for 5-6 weeks to relearn to not queue units 2. Not queue units and slowly learn how many production buildings you can constantly produce out of at any given time. It might take you 2-3 weeks longer to get to diamond, but in the end you won't get frustrated when you don't understand why you are losing since you are playing the game correctly.
On December 16 2010 08:53 sas911 wrote: I'm too busy trying to determine tech paths
Determining tech paths should probably take you all of 0.2 seconds. But really, it's something that shouldn't take up any time at all. You can't be playing very well if you're pausing mid game to just think about these things...they should be passive thought processes that occur over the entirety of the game.
You didn't lose because you built a gateway 10 seconds after, because you queued up 2 probes.
No actually. Early game a 10 second late gateway/rax/hatch can definitely lose you the game. If not it can delay a push and make it much less effective...so...yes...it does matter!
Really though, I don't understand this thread. If it's clear that not queueing is 'optimal' and you want to be the best player possible, then you bloody well shouldn't queue. Aim for a ridiculously high ideal and you'll improve much more than if you set your sights low. How can you argue against this?
People who whine about not being able to micro and macro at the same time and in turn try to justify queueing...probably haven't seen 350+ apm brood war players busting their friekin balls trying to be the best they can be.
The only time queuing isn't actively detrimental is when you know absolutely that there is no upcoming use for those minerals before the queued unit will begin. The most obvious example is your 9th worker - you'll hit 50 minerals long before your 8th worker finishes, but there is absolutely nothing else you can possibly do with it, so the 0.0001s you save from the queue comes at no cost.
I don't think its as bad as "if you queue a unit you have lost those minerals forever" - I often realize I've queued something and need the money and just cancel the queued unit - the only loss is some time, which is significant, but not as significant as resources I can never get back.
Then again, I play Protoss, so like the only thing I even queue is probes.
On December 16 2010 08:53 sas911 wrote: ..... not queueing is just asking a ridiculous amount out of every player who's in gold and under. When you have a rax with a reactor and you're pumping marines, chances are, that you'll end up failing by forgetting to constantly produce. By queueing up, sure you lose minerals at that moment, but technically after that period of time is over, you have the minerals again. At least you're constantly producing units. When I'm playing protoss, I queue up probes. I'm too busy trying to determine tech paths, building units out of warp gates (well no queue there duh). I don't want to be like "oh shit i forgot to build probes, and now my economy is totally screwed". Sure I lose 100 minerals because I queued up 2 extra probes, but if I don't have the apm to support it, I shouldn't.
It's like microing. Some beginners put way too much value on that. Sure, you can squeeze out a few units here and there, and maybe it'll help you win battles. But if you're microing and your apm doesn't allow you to continue unit production, avoid supply caps, and continue teching, then you're better off a-moving and having a solid macro.
Actually, it's practically almost exactly like micro. Sure, everyone who gets good HAS to learn to micro, but in the end, if you just concentrate on micro in the beginning, you will be lacking in the other more fundamental and important areas. And in the end it's usually never the reason you lose. The reason you lose is because you forgot to expand, didn't scout properly, didn't create any defense in time, made bad strategy decisions. You didn't lose because you built a gateway 10 seconds after, because you queued up 2 probes.
this is just wrong. if a gold and under players told me this i would just say 'stick with ONE tech plan'.players who are GOLD and under would most likely struggle with the 'very hard AI',
But if your mechanics can't support the alternative queuing units is less bad than not macroing at all (as long as you are willing to improve and get away from queuing)
You still haven't addressed the option of simply making more production structures. Also, you can't get away from queueing by queueing, it's like saying it's okay for an alchoholic to drink as long as they're willing to change at some nebulous point in the future (ok that's an extreme example but I can't think of a better one)
Lol you can't get away from queuing by queuing? I did laugh but i completely understand what you are saying. Basically, my point was - while i try and improve a separate part of my game (outside of ensuring correct production structures for x amount of bases) i would rather queue than not queue. BUT i say this because "not queuing" is the next part of my game that i am going to work on - i can't do it all at once. I am definately not saying queuing is good - queuing is fucking terrible and i do my very best to never do it. It just comes with practice and now that i am focussing on that part of my game i barely queue anymore. A lot of strategy forum assumes perfect knowledge/pro like skills but at the end of the day it is a step by step process..
I think it is better to build more production buildings than queue for a few reasons:
money queued is really just money tied up and you can't use it. It doesn't bring any benefits. As those that say they queue so that they have a buffer such that the buildings aren't idle. But the point others have been making are that your surplus will only increase, queuing will not help you bring down your surplus.
Some of the other argument against more production buildings is that with more production buildings, you don't have the economy to support them. But the thing is, you will only not be able to support all those new production buildings if you were macroing properly. Since you are banking up money, you weren't able to macro properly. It is better to build more production buildings as a buffer. In that you will be able to get an army up faster when you need reinforcement, and spend your money faster when your macro slips again.
The other point is for low levels, you shouldn't worry about micro! Work on macro first and get better at that before worrying about micro. Just a atk with your larger army, and focus on macro.
On December 15 2010 17:10 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: I agree, queuing is good. for most players, because it yields you a faster army than not queuing,
Ok I disagree entirely. Queuing won't get a faster army at all. If anything it do the exact opposite. Not this is a fairly extreme example but here is the build order of someone i got matched against last night.
This is 100% what they did. Though, to be fair, it was their placements, and they had clearly never played an RTS before, and had 0 wins in 1's through to 4's :/
Built 2 probes Assimilator on 8 1 probe in gas Pylon on 8 Gateway on 8 Queued 5 zealots immediately.
You can't honestly tell me that queueing those zealots was in any way good for this guy. Yeah his build was terrible and he stopped making probes at....8 but if he didn't queue he could have made another gateway and 5 probs. :/
That is pretty much a straw man. It would be like me saying 'Yeah, this guy made one zealot the entire match, if he queued he would have 5'
Of course I didn't mean it like that.
And queuing will get you a faster army than not queuing for most players, because it stops idle time. Let's face it, most people will just get idle time if they don't queue. That's the thing you avoid by queuing.
Not really, because in my example the money is tied up and is no longer available for use, when it should be. In yours, they have simply ceased production all together. My example was much more related to the initial idea.
Considering yours neither queues, OR keeps money low. :/
Now I get some people are saying that during micro intensive battles to queue just before it. But it really doesn't take that much to simple hit a hot key, for your rax/gateway/hatch/whatever and build another round of units. Just run your army back for a while while you do it so they don't stand and die or something.
Not to mention, you should never have the minerals saved to queue everything up before a battle anyway, if you do you have problems elsewhere. Also the whole "don't learn bad habbits" jazz.
On December 16 2010 13:03 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote:
On December 16 2010 10:05 Rodregeus wrote:
On December 15 2010 17:10 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: I agree, queuing is good. for most players, because it yields you a faster army than not queuing,
Ok I disagree entirely. Queuing won't get a faster army at all. If anything it do the exact opposite. Not this is a fairly extreme example but here is the build order of someone i got matched against last night.
This is 100% what they did. Though, to be fair, it was their placements, and they had clearly never played an RTS before, and had 0 wins in 1's through to 4's :/
Built 2 probes Assimilator on 8 1 probe in gas Pylon on 8 Gateway on 8 Queued 5 zealots immediately.
You can't honestly tell me that queueing those zealots was in any way good for this guy. Yeah his build was terrible and he stopped making probes at....8 but if he didn't queue he could have made another gateway and 5 probs. :/
That is pretty much a straw man. It would be like me saying 'Yeah, this guy made one zealot the entire match, if he queued he would have 5'
Of course I didn't mean it like that.
And queuing will get you a faster army than not queuing for most players, because it stops idle time. Let's face it, most people will just get idle time if they don't queue. That's the thing you avoid by queuing.
Not really, because in my example the money is tied up and is no longer available for use, when it should be. In yours, they have simply ceased production all together. My example was much more related to the initial idea.
Considering yours neither queues, OR keeps money low. :/
Now I get some people are saying that during micro intensive battles to queue just before it. But it really doesn't take that much to simple hit a hot key, for your rax/gateway/hatch/whatever and build another round of units. Just run your army back for a while while you do it so they don't stand and die or something.
Not to mention, you should never have the minerals saved to queue everything up before a battle anyway, if you do you have problems elsewhere. Also the whole "don't learn bad habbits" jazz.
that is very important. OP talks about fixing this specific issue, but the root problem is that you're floating ressources already. that shouldn't happen unless you have something special planned (double planetary fortress rush?)
On December 16 2010 01:25 Pokebunny wrote: I'm surprised there's so much negativity towards queueing. Those who argue that it is never good, may I ask what level you play(ed) at in SC2/BW? I find it quite beneficial at high level and never find it bottlenecking my play. I rarely queue more than one unit, but that one production round is often quite worth it.
I'm 2k+ diamond, but I play way too little since I chopped my pointyfinger... I'd consider myself around 2500+. That's a friggin moot point though.
I ask you instead, is it not better to try to play as optimally as possible to both explore new possibilities with the minerals/gas you ACTUALLY have rather than be stagnant in your skillprogression because you're into a rather bad habbits that lets you win games on the ladder, which is full of incompetent and undeveloped players at all levels?
The skill is knowing when you need to queue. Disregarding it entirely is just handicapping yourself.
No, skill is being aware of your macro enough that you're able to always keep your money low without resorting to things like queuing. Queuing shortcuts the entire process and only makes your money look low.
I agree that past early game, at anywhere but high Diamond or pro level play, it's probably a good idea to queue at least some of the time. Mid-game, when you've already powered to a good number of production buildings, and if your apm/macro isn't super refined, you're probably better off queueing up a couple rounds of units, at least when you're gonna attack or something. The main timing I'm thinking of is right after you take your third, assuming it's pretty normal timing and your main isn't totally mined out but is starting to get low. You don't want to power up enough buildings to spend all your income, because your income will drop off before long and you won't be able to support those new buildings for very long anyway.
The big thing is to *know* when you have a bunch of money in queued units, so you don't think you're too broke for an expansion or tech when you can actually afford it. Seeing someone delay their CC while a rax sits with 5 Marauders queued is painful.
No. If you can't keep your money low without queuing, make more production facilities. Maybe you only have the income to support 4 barracks, but with inconsistent production, build 5 or 6. Hopefully, as you get better you can just produce the optimal amount. This will result in more units actually on the field rather than waiting to start being poduced.
On December 17 2010 14:14 solistus wrote: You don't want to power up enough buildings to spend all your income, because your income will drop off before long and you won't be able to support those new buildings for very long anyway.
that is the point, it doesn't matter if you wouldn't be able to support it for long. It is better to get that army out faster. Because if you run out of resources the amount of army you built is pretty much the same, minus the building cost. But you'll get that final army out that much faster.
For someone who isn't on top of their macro / tech at all times, I'd say never queue past 2 rounds of units. If your production facilities have one round building and one round queue'd, and you still have extra minerals, spend it on extra production facilities / expos.
I still have no one seen addressing the issue of dequeuing though. I just had a match that reminded me of this thread because I moved a probe to a location, dequeued a probe while it was traveling, gave the traveling probe the command to make a pylon, and then let it go back and requeue that probe that I dequeued afterwards.
This is basically how I work and how I solved the issue of queuing over time. I've simply trained a certain awareness for just how much I have tied up in queued resources at any point and dequeue it as I need. In fact, I'm sort of always trying to get my queues as full as I can get them with my resources because I can dequeue it anyway (which I do) and it makes the chance of idle production buildings that much smaller.
I don't see how using this technique is not optimal, I have all the money available that I need by just dequeuing and I don't have to go back to my base all the time, and seeing that I often bet a lot on spellcasters this is important to me.
On December 17 2010 15:32 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: I still have no one seen addressing the issue of dequeuing though. I just had a match that reminded me of this thread because I moved a probe to a location, dequeued a probe while it was traveling, gave the traveling probe the command to make a pylon, and then let it go back and requeue that probe that I dequeued afterwards.
This is basically how I work and how I solved the issue of queuing over time. I've simply trained a certain awareness for just how much I have tied up in queued resources at any point and dequeue it as I need. In fact, I'm sort of always trying to get my queues as full as I can get them with my resources because I can dequeue it anyway (which I do) and it makes the chance of idle production buildings that much smaller.
I don't see how using this technique is not optimal, I have all the money available that I need by just dequeuing and I don't have to go back to my base all the time, and seeing that I often bet a lot on spellcasters this is important to me.
A couple points:
#1: If you really have enough presence of mind to keep track of what you have available for canceling in the queues, wouldn't that mental energy be far better spent keeping track of when you need to build the next round? Far simpler, and much more useful, and it's not like you have to go back to your base to add that next round.
#2: If you can afford to queue more than one extra round of units, you're doing it wrong anyway.
Honestly it really just flabbergasts me that there are people arguing that queuing can be good.
If you can actually afford to queue, then queuing is not actually going to help you keep consistent production, because the point of failure has already happened, your macro has *already* slipped, and you have too many resources. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to afford to queue units at all. Building extra production structures is pretty much always going to be better.
On December 17 2010 15:32 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: I still have no one seen addressing the issue of dequeuing though. I just had a match that reminded me of this thread because I moved a probe to a location, dequeued a probe while it was traveling, gave the traveling probe the command to make a pylon, and then let it go back and requeue that probe that I dequeued afterwards.
This is basically how I work and how I solved the issue of queuing over time. I've simply trained a certain awareness for just how much I have tied up in queued resources at any point and dequeue it as I need. In fact, I'm sort of always trying to get my queues as full as I can get them with my resources because I can dequeue it anyway (which I do) and it makes the chance of idle production buildings that much smaller.
I don't see how using this technique is not optimal, I have all the money available that I need by just dequeuing and I don't have to go back to my base all the time, and seeing that I often bet a lot on spellcasters this is important to me.
A couple points:
#1: If you really have enough presence of mind to keep track of what you have available for canceling in the queues, wouldn't that mental energy be far better spent keeping track of when you need to build the next round? Far simpler, and much more useful, and it's not like you have to go back to your base to add that next round.
No, because you can't go back to reproduce stuff when you're in battle, well, you can, but it will hamper your micro. I don't know about you, but I usually place buildings when I'm not in battle unless I really have to. I usually build them when I told my army to move to my enemy.
#2: If you can afford to queue more than one extra round of units, you're doing it wrong anyway.
That's ridiculous, in the late or mid game it's perfectly acceptable to have 300/200 minerals free at some point or one extra colossus.
Also, even if it were wrong, it's not an argument against queuing. This silly argument is often repeated, 'Well, if you let it come that far, you were doing it wrong already', well yeah, obviously, so what? people make mistakes. The very reason that I queue is because I recognise from myself that I make mistakes and queuing provides a buffer for me to make those mistakes.
It's quite acceptable to have 400 minerals and 300 gas floating in mid to late game anyway, you lose it after the next warpgate cooldown. While many people store that money simply in their bank, I store it in my queues and dequeue it when I need it because if I store it in my queue it provides a buffer in unit production when I'm tied up.
On December 17 2010 15:32 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: I still have no one seen addressing the issue of dequeuing though. I just had a match that reminded me of this thread because I moved a probe to a location, dequeued a probe while it was traveling, gave the traveling probe the command to make a pylon, and then let it go back and requeue that probe that I dequeued afterwards.
This is basically how I work and how I solved the issue of queuing over time. I've simply trained a certain awareness for just how much I have tied up in queued resources at any point and dequeue it as I need. In fact, I'm sort of always trying to get my queues as full as I can get them with my resources because I can dequeue it anyway (which I do) and it makes the chance of idle production buildings that much smaller.
I don't see how using this technique is not optimal, I have all the money available that I need by just dequeuing and I don't have to go back to my base all the time, and seeing that I often bet a lot on spellcasters this is important to me.
I am not sure if you are capable of grasping the basic concept of keeping your money low if you did not grasp it by now. So you can dequeue and free your resources? People here told you that money in the queue is the same as floating money, so what does that prove? You still have floating money that could have been spent on something useful. You dequeue and spend the money on actual production, good, you just got closer to keeping your money low! But all that time when your money was tied up in queued units is already lost. You could have spent that money on something actually helping you on the field of battle, making your army bigger. Having a smaller army is not optimal.
You have the money available, but you do not spend it. This is why it is not optimal. Seriously, it feels like people are trolling here on purpose.
On December 17 2010 15:32 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: I still have no one seen addressing the issue of dequeuing though. I just had a match that reminded me of this thread because I moved a probe to a location, dequeued a probe while it was traveling, gave the traveling probe the command to make a pylon, and then let it go back and requeue that probe that I dequeued afterwards.
This is basically how I work and how I solved the issue of queuing over time. I've simply trained a certain awareness for just how much I have tied up in queued resources at any point and dequeue it as I need. In fact, I'm sort of always trying to get my queues as full as I can get them with my resources because I can dequeue it anyway (which I do) and it makes the chance of idle production buildings that much smaller.
I don't see how using this technique is not optimal, I have all the money available that I need by just dequeuing and I don't have to go back to my base all the time, and seeing that I often bet a lot on spellcasters this is important to me.
I am not sure if you are capable of grasping the basic concept of keeping your money low if you did not grasp it by now. So you can dequeue and free your resources? People here told you that money in the queue is the same as floating money, so what does that prove? You still have floating money that could have been spent on something useful. You dequeue and spend the money on actual production, good, you just got closer to keeping your money low! But all that time when your money was tied up in queued units is already lost. You could have spent that money on something actually helping you on the field of battle, making your army bigger. Having a smaller army is not optimal.
You have the money available, but you do not spend it. This is why it is not optimal. Seriously, it feels like people are trolling here on purpose.
Sigh, for the thousandth time, it's not about keeping my money low.
It's about building a buffer for myself to keep unit production going when I'm tied up.
And on what should I spend that 400 anyway? A couple of extra gateways I can't fund? I'd rather use it as a buffer to ensure that I am producing non stop.
On December 17 2010 18:35 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: Sigh, for the thousandth time, it's not about keeping my money low.
It's about building a buffer for myself to keep unit production going when I'm tied up.
And on what should I spend that 400 anyway? A couple of extra gateways I can't fund? I'd rather use it as a buffer to ensure that I am producing non stop.
400 is one barracks and 5 marines. This is 5 additional marines on the field, instead of 8 marines in the queue. Yes, you are buying yourself an error buffer if you queue, but for the thousandth time (using your words), additional production buildings give you that buffer as well in addition to the ability to catch up (or minimise losses in other words) and all the other benefits already mentioned before.
Yes, you are 150 behind because you are unable to use the additional barracks once you build your 5 marines (unless you expand, which means you can still get even more return on that investment in the future), but if you queue you are 400 behind in terms of your army value. Is that now clear?
On December 17 2010 18:35 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: Sigh, for the thousandth time, it's not about keeping my money low.
It's about building a buffer for myself to keep unit production going when I'm tied up.
And on what should I spend that 400 anyway? A couple of extra gateways I can't fund? I'd rather use it as a buffer to ensure that I am producing non stop.
400 is one barracks and 5 marines. This is 5 additional marines on the field, instead of 8 marines in the queue. Yes, you are buying yourself an error buffer if you queue, but for the thousandth time (using your words), additional production buildings give you that buffer as well in addition to the ability to catch up (or minimise losses in other words) and all the other benefits already mentioned before.
But that's the point, it doesn't give me that buffer. I know that in the future I will lag once again on keeping with my production, and then again. Those 400 minerals give me 5 extra marines one time. Always having 400 minerals stuck in my queue gives me infallible production capabilities for the rest of the match.
It's a one-time deposit that you make (and that you can reclaim if you really need to) to always have continual production, and I know that I will not have it without it. And I doubt many here have it without it if even people like Idra don't have it 100%.
Yes, you are 150 behind because you are unable to use the additional barracks once you build your 5 marines (unless you expand, which means you can still get even more return on that investment in the future), but if you queue you are 400 behind in terms of your army value. Is that now clear?
Yes, that's clear, but I happily pay that investment to have guaranteed continuous marine production for the rest of the match.
Also, 400 isn't that much at the state of the game that you're doing this. Random target acquisition in A-move will cost you five marines or more.
But yeah, when I'm saving for a FE, I'm saving that money in my queue, I know how much I've queued up so it's simple maths to know when I have it. I'm saving it in my queue for the simple reason that say that he suddenly attacks and I'm completely tied up in microing around in my base. I can devote all my attention to my micro because I know that unit production will go on as usual.
On December 17 2010 19:35 evanthebouncy! wrote: pros do that under pressure as well :p no worries. Just don't make a habit of queing
Maybe, but I'm not a pro and I know it's quite likely that I'll forget production in such a tense situation, just when I need it the most.
I mean, the chance is like 30-40% I guess that I would lapse production in such a situation, but even if it didn't happen, I am still putting valuable time and effort into that when I am micro-ing workers and stuff back and forth.
If you're actively trying to get better, and want to see improvement: Don't queue. If you want to just play the game for fun and enjoyment, and don't want the speediest root to being a better player: Queue.
That's pretty much the summation of the arguments presented. You're all welcome.
On December 17 2010 18:35 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: It's about building a buffer for myself to keep unit production going when I'm tied up.
And on what should I spend that 400 anyway? A couple of extra gateways I can't fund?
If you have money to queue units, odds are you could in fact fund those extra gateways
Not really, I have 400 extra minerals in mid-late game (which is really not that bad) because my production has slipped before. I have all the facilities I can afford with constant production, and probably a bit more too, by putting that in a queue I establish that I won't slip again.
If I make another gateway from it, that gives me two extra zealots, and after that I can't fund the thing anymore. And this is really the point in the game where two extra zealots are basically insignificant next to always having your production facilities up and constantly making probes.
In fact, I'd say that constantly making probes is such a high priority that if you found that it sometimes lapses in early game, it's definitely worth it to have two less zealots to guarantee constant probe production by queuing it up to five. It's an investment that will definitely pay back later.
Consider producing marines out of 4 raxes. Every 25 seconds you need to pop back and put another marine in production. Marines are one of the fastest units, and they produce out of a lot of structures, so it's about as bad as it's going to get (bad = demanding).
Now, if your income is higher than what you can spend, you should be making more structures to spend with. I don't think anyone is disagreeing with this. The point being made seems to be that when fighting, we may mess up that 25-second pop-back and mess up unit production, which causes a surplus in resources. Making extra structures to reduce this surplus seems like a bad idea then, since after reducing the temporary surplus, there will be no extra resources to fund further production from the new structure.
So, back to the 4 rax (completely arbitrary number). Each rax produces 2.4 marines per minute, which is 120 minerals. So we're consuming 480 minerals/minute if we keep on top of the macro. We assume that we have the income to do this and nothing except this, so if we macro well we'll always have 0 minerals left over. Now magine there's a fight, we slip up by 25 seconds and our raxes don't do anything for those 25 seconds. We now have 200 minerals left over. We should have had 0 minerals left and 4 more marines, but we got attacked by reapers. This never happens in real games, so we were duly shocked and forgot production for 25 seconds.
The question is then; do we use these 200 minerals to queue 1 marine in each barracks, to prevent this from happening again, or do we make a barracks and produce one marine (that's all we can afford, assuming we're back on our macro now)?
Well, if we queue, the next time we mess up for 25 seconds, we'll have 4 marines more than we would have if we did nothing.
If we make a rax and produce a marine, we'll have 1 marine more than if we did nothing. This guy will be available even if we don't mess up again, however.
So, the queue method will give us 3 more marines than the extra structure after the second mess-up, but the extra structure method gives us a guaranteed return, which is better if the mess-up is a one-time incident. Also worth noting is that after the second mess-up, we again have 200 minerals extra. The queue method has protected production, and we've made 4 marines in this time, more or less putting us back to where we started, with another 200 minerals left over and unit production now "in sync" again. In order to continue being safe, we'll have to invest these 200 minerals into the queue again, or risk messing up and having 400 minerals left over an less marines than we should have (unless you want to queue even more, but that would only protect us from messing up macro for 50 seconds, something that just doesn't happen unless you're unconscious). The extra rax can spend this 200 on 4 more marines over 2 minutes, or get one marine and another rax, if this problem is going to be reoccurring and you want to spend the surplus faster.
From this, I would like to conclude that if you mess up once, you'll have 1 more marine if you build a rax instead of queuing. If you mess up twice, you're going to have 1 more marine than the queue player. If you mess up three times, still 1 more marine. This is a very small example, so don't dismiss the 1 marine. Many small things add up... The aim is to have more units, and more raxes gets more units in the end than queueing. Even if you mess up over and over again. Queuing is of course better than not doing anything at all with your extra money!
Finally, note that while getting more raxes eventually comes out on top in number of units, there's a time-delay involved. This is a big plus for the queue-method. More raxes, however, is way more useful in the lategame, when army re-production as fast as possible becomes an issue. So, for early game, when having units RIGHT NOW is important, queue. For late game, when remaking units FAST is important, extra rax(es). For highest total amount of units somewhere in the midgame, extra rax(es).
I don't care which one you do, but now you know the pros and cons of both and can make up your mind yourself.
On December 17 2010 20:33 Island wrote: Consider producing marines out of 4 raxes. Every 25 seconds you need to pop back and put another marine in production. Marines are one of the fastest units, and they produce out of a lot of structures, so it's about as bad as it's going to get (bad = demanding).
Now, if your income is higher than what you can spend, you should be making more structures to spend with. I don't think anyone is disagreeing with this. The point being made seems to be that when fighting, we may mess up that 25-second pop-back and mess up unit production, which causes a surplus in resources. Making extra structures to reduce this surplus seems like a bad idea then, since after reducing the temporary surplus, there will be no extra resources to fund further production from the new structure.
So, back to the 4 rax (completely arbitrary number). Each rax produces 2.4 marines per minute, which is 120 minerals. So we're consuming 480 minerals/minute if we keep on top of the macro. We assume that we have the income to do this and nothing except this, so if we macro well we'll always have 0 minerals left over. Now magine there's a fight, we slip up by 25 seconds and our raxes don't do anything for those 25 seconds. We now have 200 minerals left over. We should have had 0 minerals left and 4 more marines, but we got attacked by reapers. This never happens in real games, so we were duly shocked and forgot production for 25 seconds.
The question is then; do we use these 200 minerals to queue 1 marine in each barracks, to prevent this from happening again, or do we make a barracks and produce one marine (that's all we can afford, assuming we're back on our macro now)?
Well, if we queue, the next time we mess up for 25 seconds, we'll have 4 marines more than we would have if we did nothing.
If we make a rax and produce a marine, we'll have 1 marine more than if we did nothing. This guy will be available even if we don't mess up again, however.
So, the queue method will give us 3 more marines than the extra structure after the second mess-up, but the extra structure method gives us a guaranteed return, which is better if the mess-up is a one-time incident. Also worth noting is that after the second mess-up, we again have 200 minerals extra. The queue method has protected production, and we've made 4 marines in this time, more or less putting us back to where we started, with another 200 minerals left over and unit production now "in sync" again. In order to continue being safe, we'll have to invest these 200 minerals into the queue again, or risk messing up and having 400 minerals left over an less marines than we should have (unless you want to queue even more, but that would only protect us from messing up macro for 50 seconds, something that just doesn't happen unless you're unconscious). The extra rax can spend this 200 on 4 more marines over 2 minutes, or get one marine and another rax, if this problem is going to be reoccurring and you want to spend the surplus faster.
From this, I would like to conclude that if you mess up once, you'll have 1 more marine if you build a rax instead of queuing. If you mess up twice, you're going to have 1 more marine than the queue player. If you mess up three times, still 1 more marine. This is a very small example, so don't dismiss the 1 marine. Many small things add up... The aim is to have more units, and more raxes gets more units in the end than queueing. Even if you mess up over and over again. Queuing is of course better than not doing anything at all with your extra money!
Finally, note that while getting more raxes eventually comes out on top in number of units, there's a time-delay involved. This is a big plus for the queue-method. More raxes, however, is way more useful in the lategame, when army re-production as fast as possible becomes an issue. So, for early game, when having units RIGHT NOW is important, queue. For late game, when remaking units FAST is important, extra rax(es). For highest total amount of units somewhere in the midgame, extra rax(es).
I don't care which one you do, but now you know the pros and cons of both and can make up your mind yourself.
I laik this post, nice mathematical breakdown of it.
I choose the queue, because as I said, I expect that I'll mess up again.
That's basically my take on this an a lot of issues, many people plan strategies on the assumption that they, or their opponents, aren't going to make mistake. We're only human, I plan on the assumption that both I, and my opponent, are going to make mistakes.
On December 17 2010 19:18 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: But that's the point, it doesn't give me that buffer. I know that in the future I will lag once again on keeping with my production, and then again. Those 400 minerals give me 5 extra marines one time. Always having 400 minerals stuck in my queue gives me infallible production capabilities for the rest of the match.
It's a one-time deposit that you make (and that you can reclaim if you really need to) to always have continual production, and I know that I will not have it without it. And I doubt many here have it without it if even people like Idra don't have it 100%.
Yes it does give you that buffer. Next time you slip, you can just use the additional production facilities you built before to spend your excess money on units. Grant you, they are out later than they would if you had continuous production, but once they are out, you are even and you are again only 150 minerals behind, not 400.
Yes, that's clear, but I happily pay that investment to have guaranteed continuous marine production for the rest of the match.
Also, 400 isn't that much at the state of the game that you're doing this. Random target acquisition in A-move will cost you five marines or more.
But yeah, when I'm saving for a FE, I'm saving that money in my queue, I know how much I've queued up so it's simple maths to know when I have it. I'm saving it in my queue for the simple reason that say that he suddenly attacks and I'm completely tied up in microing around in my base. I can devote all my attention to my micro because I know that unit production will go on as usual.
Yes, engaging in a fight in a suboptimal way is also an error that can cost you money, but it is not an argument to make more errors that cost you even more money. To win you want to minimise the amount of money you waste - this is the whole idea behind the game. But hey, nobody forces you to get better - do play your suboptimal way, but do not give advice to others to do the same and argue it is a good thing to do when all the evidence shows that it is not.
Yes it does give you that buffer. Next time you slip, you can just use the additional production facilities you built before to spend your excess money on units. Grant you, they are out later than they would if you had continuous production, but once they are out, you are even and you are again only 150 minerals behind, not 400.
No I'm not, because if I slip, I slip on all of my production facilities of course, all, let's say 6 barracks slipped one production round, I would need substantial rounds of extra facilities to get that back.
It takes me 6 rounds to get that back, now, it's at all not unlikely that I'll slip again before those 6 rounds are over if the micro gets pretty distractive.
Yes, engaging in a fight in a suboptimal way is also an error that can cost you money, but it is not an argument to make more errors that cost you even more money. To win you want to minimise the amount of money you waste - this is the whole idea behind the game. But hey, nobody forces you to get better - do play your suboptimal way,
Ehhr, maybe if you ever could realistically get to that level.
Even pros still slip (and also queue up in late game, mind you) production round, no one will feasibly get to that level that they will never slip. To assume you will ever get there, no matter how many practice, is just delusion of grandeur.
You will never, ever, get to the level that your mechanics are so infallible that you never slip production, you're basing your strategies and training regime on the assumption that you will some day and call this 'trying to improve', I set my goals more reasonably and realistically and am actually improving rather than people who already start to train some skill that will only become an advantage at the point that their mechanics strides above mortal limits..
but do not give advice to others to do the same and argue it is a good thing to do when all the evidence shows that it is not.
All the evidence is people saying 'I can't believe you defend queuing!' with no real argument while the people who defend it have solid mathematics to back the idea up.
IMO you can safely qeue an extra tech/unit after ~80% of production of the first (depending on the built time) If you are going to micro in a battle, I would even say its better to set up a qeue of units because you'll have "no time" producing units while battling.
On December 17 2010 21:32 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: No I'm not, because if I slip, I slip on all of my production facilities of course, all, let's say 6 barracks slipped one production round, I would need substantial rounds of extra facilities to get that back.
It takes me 6 rounds to get that back, now, it's at all not unlikely that I'll slip again before those 6 rounds are over if the micro gets pretty distractive.
This only says that you may need more than one additional production facility depending of how bad your play is. If you slip by a few seconds max, one will be enough, if you slip more, you will need more - wow, what a surprise. As I mentioned after you catch up you are still ahead on your army count compared to where you would be if you just queued. Yes there may be a situation where you lose while you are trying to catch up, but there will be many more situations where you lose because your army is too small because your money is tied up in the queue instead of being spent.
Ehhr, maybe if you ever could realistically get to that level.
Even pros still slip (and also queue up in late game, mind you) production round, no one will feasibly get to that level that they will never slip. To assume you will ever get there, no matter how many practice, is just delusion of grandeur.
You will never, ever, get to the level that your mechanics are so infallible that you never slip production, you're basing your strategies and training regime on the assumption that you will some day and call this 'trying to improve', I set my goals more reasonably and realistically and am actually improving rather than people who already start to train some skill that will only become an advantage at the point that their mechanics strides above mortal limits..
You certainly can realistically get to a level where you do not slip by more than a few seconds. Many pros are at that level (I would say most of them). And not only pros. Many diamond players are at that level. If you slip by a few seconds every so often, one or two additional production facilities will be enough to be able to catch up and it is a much smaller investment than a queue. As previously mentioned by a lot of people in this thread, but you keep ignoring it with your stubborn argument.
All the evidence is people saying 'I can't believe you defend queuing!' with no real argument while the people who defend it have solid mathematics to back the idea up.
No dude, now you are being delusional. You are trying to argue against mathematically proven fact without bringing any new evidence to the table, you are being presented with the old mathematical evidence proving your approach to be suboptimal, but you keep arguing for the sake of it and just ignoring the evidence. Really, this discussion is pointless.
On December 17 2010 21:53 malthias wrote: You certainly can realistically get to a level where you do not slip by more than a few seconds. Many pros are at that level (I would say most of them). And not only pros. Many diamond players are at that level. If you slip by a few seconds every so often, one or two additional production facilities will be enough to be able to catch up and it is a much smaller investment than a queue.
Maybe if you're not being pressured...
Dude, pros make mistakes of the magnitude of giving away 6 free roaches due to a misrally in the middle of a battle (HuK vs Ret), accidentally queuing up hallucination after warpgate and not realizing that they have 100/100 less than they should have (HuK vs KiWiKaKi). Accidentally planting down two twilight councils (Hasu vs HasHe). Letting buildings burn down instead of repairing them with ample time to spare.
Don't be deluded about how perfect people are, people make mistakes, even the best people in this game make these mistakes all the time, they let rally points slip, they forget to put probes back on gas after muta harass. These slips simply happen. Download a replay file of a pro, you'll see that when they are being pressured there is idle time on production facilities.
As previously mentioned by a lot of people in this thread, but you keep ignoring it with your stubborn argument.
The maths done by the user some posts above indicates otherwise.
Not having queued up and then slipping is inferior to having queued up, but not slipping.
No dude, now you are being delusional. You are trying to argue against mathematically proven fact without bringing any new evidence to the table, you are being presented with the old mathematical evidence proving your approach to be suboptimal, but you keep arguing for the sake of it and just ignoring the evidence. Really, this discussion is pointless.
What mathematical?
The only maths I had seen showed that queueing + small slip is superior to not queuing + small slips.
Of course, not queueing + no slips is the best, but that's not realistic.
On December 17 2010 22:23 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: Maybe if you're not being pressured...
If you are not being pressured then you can easily have a perfect macro.
Dude, pros make mistakes of the magnitude of giving away 6 free roaches due to a misrally in the middle of a battle (HuK vs Ret), accidentally queuing up hallucination after warpgate and not realizing that they have 100/100 less than they should have (HuK vs KiWiKaKi). Accidentally planting down two twilight councils (Hasu vs HasHe). Letting buildings burn down instead of repairing them with ample time to spare.
Of course people are making big mistakes, that is what is losing them the games. It is not an argument to not to try to avoid these mistakes.
Don't be deluded about how perfect people are, people make mistakes, even the best people in this game make these mistakes all the time, they let rally points slip, they forget to put probes back on gas after muta harass. These slips simply happen. Download a replay file of a pro, you'll see that when they are being pressured there is idle time on production facilities.
I have watched hundreds of pro replays. If they make macro mistakes, they are usually small. If they make a bigger mistake, it usually costs them a game. All of them try to avoid these mistakes, and the one doing it better usually wins (obviously macro is not all that matters, but it is one of the most important factors).
The maths done by the user some posts above indicates otherwise.
Not having queued up and then slipping is inferior to having queued up, but not slipping.
The maths done by the user some posts above indicates the same. The queue is not going to give you 3 extra marines after the second mess up. It is going to give you 3 extra marines for the time it takes your extra barracks to make these 3 marines (a little bit more than one minute total, after 25 seconds you will be 2 marines behind, after 50 seconds 1 marine, after 75 seconds you will be even, after 100 seconds you will be one marine ahead again), that's all. And the cost of it is one marine less during all that time between your first and second mess up. This is also a very limited example on a very small economy and the cheapest unit in game, in most instances the amount of units less on the field if you queue while you are not making macro errors would be much bigger than the one marine.
What mathematical?
The only maths I had seen showed that queueing + small slip is superior to not queuing + small slips.
Of course, not queueing + no slips is the best, but that's not realistic.
There is plenty of posts in this thread, including mine, showing you mathematical advantage of extra production buildings, expansions or new tech over the queue, if you can't be bothered reading them, I will not waste time repeating it.
I actually think an extra production facility is also insurance against future slip-ups, since in theory it goes like this:
You have 4 rax and miss a cycle and have 200 extra mins. You make a rax and an extra marine, and now you're back to normal. You now have 4 rax constantly making marines, and 1 rax doing nothing. Let's say you miss a quarter of a cycle and have 50 extra minerals: you can now spend this in your extra rax, so it's not a pure loss like queuing up a bunch of marines is.
Even better, let's say you expo or whatever and need more rax... well you've already built one and are partway there! Good work! It would seem that laying down an extra prod fac, in addition to helping you recover from later errors, actually SETS UP for an increased economy down the road.
The ideal situation, of course, is to stop missing production cycles. But that's beside the point. Here's another argument against Queuing:
Queuing promotes bad habits. Let's say I have forgotten a prod cycle during a game, and I either make another prod fac, or I make a queue. If I make another prod fac, and later I forget to keep on making marines during a battle and I die, then my heart is full of tears as my opponent rips through my base, typing "rofl noob" in all chat. I curse my mediocre APM and promise to build every prod cycle next time. I hate forgetting that prod cycle! I REMEMBER it. I LEARN FROM it. If I forget marines and am saved by the queue, I maybe hang on and win a game I shouldn't have. Next time, I will be more likely to forget marines, since it didn't bite me last game. I DON'T learn from it. I become complacent, fat and lazy and become a worse player.
So in a way, maybe it IS the case the queuing will help you be more effective - this game. But if I want to learn a lesson, maybe get my butt kicked in the process, but emerge from the fire a better player, maybe it's better to not deal well with missing entire prod cycles, and to hate myself for it, and stop missing them in the future. If I'm a 2k+ Diamond League player and I miss a prod cycle, sure, I'll slap down another prod fac and deal with it. But maybe I'm not, and maybe I DESERVE to lose games for this, and become stronger in the process.
But hey, you can have your crutch if you want it. I'm just saying that nobody ever grew huge bulging muscles by avoiding the "pain" in "no pain no gain"
There are times where you shouldn't queue, but also times where its not that bad... If you have your 200/200 army, and 10k in the bank but the fighting is going back and forth, there's no reason not to queue. You can drop another 10 barracks at that point, and you would still be able to queue on all of them. This situation doesn't come up all that often, but it does occasionally, and if there is nothing else to do with your money, why not micro that 200 army better and let the reinforcements come from your 20 production buildings queued up?
The problem with the statement that queuing is ok, is that it smacks in the face the concept of optimized play.
Optimized play is pretty much (from the very start of the game): 1. Are units producing from every structure, if yes goto 2; else make units 2. Do I have enough supply, if yes goto 3; else make supply 3. Do I still have extra money, if yes build a building/get an upgrade; else goto 1
By switching to a mentality that at some point queuing is ok moves away from this concept of optimized play. I breaks the simple structure that guarantees the most units out at any given time for your given ability.
It creates a new mentality, that it is "optimal" to invest in things that are delayed in order to allow for a human error element. This breaks the mindset of optimal play. In this new mindset you will start to micro longer and longer and need to que more and more. For the time it works for you it will set up this huge bad habit, since it will work in the short term. Then when you advance behind it and hit a wall because your opponents will have stuck with optimized play what will you do?
Where optimized play already allows for the human error element. It tells you if you have extra minerals after units are producing and supply is met then you build a building. Done! No new thinking involved. The simple pattern remains simple and you will learn to do it more quickly over time.
On December 18 2010 00:25 Kryptix wrote: There are times where you shouldn't queue, but also times where its not that bad... If you have your 200/200 army, and 10k in the bank but the fighting is going back and forth, there's no reason not to queue. You can drop another 10 barracks at that point, and you would still be able to queue on all of them. This situation doesn't come up all that often, but it does occasionally, and if there is nothing else to do with your money, why not micro that 200 army better and let the reinforcements come from your 20 production buildings queued up?
I know this happens, but there should be a lesson here too. Missing 10k income worth of opportunity seems like a pretty bad basis for an argument for queuing. It seems to suggest you should be putting your army at greater risk to press for advantage.
On December 17 2010 17:23 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote: It's quite acceptable to have 400 minerals and 300 gas floating in mid to late game anyway, you lose it after the next warpgate cooldown. While many people store that money simply in their bank, I store it in my queues and dequeue it when I need it because if I store it in my queue it provides a buffer in unit production when I'm tied up.
If this happens, you need to adjust your playstyle such that you don't get that tied up, because not being able to spend your money consistently is going to be a hard cieling to your ability to move up. You can actually do quite a lot to work AROUND the problem of needing to finely control your units in battle. Also, making pylons takes a LOT more attention than pressing 3s*clickclickclick* or whatever, and you have to do that whether you queue or not! It'd actually be better to just make pylons sooner than you really need them so you can spam units really quick in an incoming hectic situation
Every bad habit is bad... I started with Nexus as 2 and I try to get myself to key it as 4 and it's freakin tough and I regret not setting it to 4 right from the start.
On December 18 2010 00:58 Kammalleri wrote: Every bad habit is bad... I started with Nexus as 2 and I try to get myself to key it as 4 and it's freakin tough and I regret not setting it to 4 right from the start.
Yeah, I guess nexus on 2 might not be optimal but I feel that it's orders of magnitude less important than not queueing things. If you're already used to having it on 2, you can probably just leave it there and be OK unless you're aware of specific problems it's causing.
It's good to know the relative importance of the various holes in your play. Something like getting upgrades at a suboptimal timing isn't even going to matter if you consistently have units queued and are forgetting to make workers in the midgame.
On December 17 2010 20:33 Island wrote: Consider producing marines out of 4 raxes. Every 25 seconds you need to pop back and put another marine in production. Marines are one of the fastest units, and they produce out of a lot of structures, so it's about as bad as it's going to get (bad = demanding).
Now, if your income is higher than what you can spend, you should be making more structures to spend with. I don't think anyone is disagreeing with this. The point being made seems to be that when fighting, we may mess up that 25-second pop-back and mess up unit production, which causes a surplus in resources. Making extra structures to reduce this surplus seems like a bad idea then, since after reducing the temporary surplus, there will be no extra resources to fund further production from the new structure.
So, back to the 4 rax (completely arbitrary number). Each rax produces 2.4 marines per minute, which is 120 minerals. So we're consuming 480 minerals/minute if we keep on top of the macro. We assume that we have the income to do this and nothing except this, so if we macro well we'll always have 0 minerals left over. Now magine there's a fight, we slip up by 25 seconds and our raxes don't do anything for those 25 seconds. We now have 200 minerals left over. We should have had 0 minerals left and 4 more marines, but we got attacked by reapers. This never happens in real games, so we were duly shocked and forgot production for 25 seconds.
The question is then; do we use these 200 minerals to queue 1 marine in each barracks, to prevent this from happening again, or do we make a barracks and produce one marine (that's all we can afford, assuming we're back on our macro now)?
Well, if we queue, the next time we mess up for 25 seconds, we'll have 4 marines more than we would have if we did nothing.
If we make a rax and produce a marine, we'll have 1 marine more than if we did nothing. This guy will be available even if we don't mess up again, however.
So, the queue method will give us 3 more marines than the extra structure after the second mess-up, but the extra structure method gives us a guaranteed return, which is better if the mess-up is a one-time incident. Also worth noting is that after the second mess-up, we again have 200 minerals extra. The queue method has protected production, and we've made 4 marines in this time, more or less putting us back to where we started, with another 200 minerals left over and unit production now "in sync" again. In order to continue being safe, we'll have to invest these 200 minerals into the queue again, or risk messing up and having 400 minerals left over an less marines than we should have (unless you want to queue even more, but that would only protect us from messing up macro for 50 seconds, something that just doesn't happen unless you're unconscious). The extra rax can spend this 200 on 4 more marines over 2 minutes, or get one marine and another rax, if this problem is going to be reoccurring and you want to spend the surplus faster.
From this, I would like to conclude that if you mess up once, you'll have 1 more marine if you build a rax instead of queuing. If you mess up twice, you're going to have 1 more marine than the queue player. If you mess up three times, still 1 more marine. This is a very small example, so don't dismiss the 1 marine. Many small things add up... The aim is to have more units, and more raxes gets more units in the end than queueing. Even if you mess up over and over again. Queuing is of course better than not doing anything at all with your extra money!
Finally, note that while getting more raxes eventually comes out on top in number of units, there's a time-delay involved. This is a big plus for the queue-method. More raxes, however, is way more useful in the lategame, when army re-production as fast as possible becomes an issue. So, for early game, when having units RIGHT NOW is important, queue. For late game, when remaking units FAST is important, extra rax(es). For highest total amount of units somewhere in the midgame, extra rax(es).
I don't care which one you do, but now you know the pros and cons of both and can make up your mind yourself.
Nice post, really nice explanation of why people prefer to queue units. Yet, there's something that I think is missing in your analysis and is really important to have in mind. What happens when you don't have enough money to queue your units?
I play protoss, so queueing isn't really an option for me (except for probes), but as far as I have seen 90% of the time you have just enough money to keep your buildings busy with a leftover of 50~100 minerals unless you intend to tech/expand, in which case those leftover resources already have a purpose. I suppose this should be the case for terran too as I don't think having money just hanging around is such a great idea.
So by the time you move to defend/attack, you shouldn't be able to queue because you lack the resources to do so and, if you do have the resources, it's likely because your macro slipped before engaging.
I agree with you on the queueing vs building additional structures though, as everybody falls behind in their macro and having those units can make a lot of difference
On December 17 2010 20:33 Island wrote: Consider producing marines out of 4 raxes. Every 25 seconds you need to pop back and put another marine in production. Marines are one of the fastest units, and they produce out of a lot of structures, so it's about as bad as it's going to get (bad = demanding). + Show Spoiler +
Now, if your income is higher than what you can spend, you should be making more structures to spend with. I don't think anyone is disagreeing with this. The point being made seems to be that when fighting, we may mess up that 25-second pop-back and mess up unit production, which causes a surplus in resources. Making extra structures to reduce this surplus seems like a bad idea then, since after reducing the temporary surplus, there will be no extra resources to fund further production from the new structure.
So, back to the 4 rax (completely arbitrary number). Each rax produces 2.4 marines per minute, which is 120 minerals. So we're consuming 480 minerals/minute if we keep on top of the macro. We assume that we have the income to do this and nothing except this, so if we macro well we'll always have 0 minerals left over. Now magine there's a fight, we slip up by 25 seconds and our raxes don't do anything for those 25 seconds. We now have 200 minerals left over. We should have had 0 minerals left and 4 more marines, but we got attacked by reapers. This never happens in real games, so we were duly shocked and forgot production for 25 seconds.
The question is then; do we use these 200 minerals to queue 1 marine in each barracks, to prevent this from happening again, or do we make a barracks and produce one marine (that's all we can afford, assuming we're back on our macro now)?
Well, if we queue, the next time we mess up for 25 seconds, we'll have 4 marines more than we would have if we did nothing.
If we make a rax and produce a marine, we'll have 1 marine more than if we did nothing. This guy will be available even if we don't mess up again, however.
So, the queue method will give us 3 more marines than the extra structure after the second mess-up, but the extra structure method gives us a guaranteed return, which is better if the mess-up is a one-time incident. Also worth noting is that after the second mess-up, we again have 200 minerals extra. The queue method has protected production, and we've made 4 marines in this time, more or less putting us back to where we started, with another 200 minerals left over and unit production now "in sync" again. In order to continue being safe, we'll have to invest these 200 minerals into the queue again, or risk messing up and having 400 minerals left over an less marines than we should have (unless you want to queue even more, but that would only protect us from messing up macro for 50 seconds, something that just doesn't happen unless you're unconscious). The extra rax can spend this 200 on 4 more marines over 2 minutes, or get one marine and another rax, if this problem is going to be reoccurring and you want to spend the surplus faster.
From this, I would like to conclude that if you mess up once, you'll have 1 more marine if you build a rax instead of queuing. If you mess up twice, you're going to have 1 more marine than the queue player. If you mess up three times, still 1 more marine. This is a very small example, so don't dismiss the 1 marine. Many small things add up... The aim is to have more units, and more raxes gets more units in the end than queueing. Even if you mess up over and over again. Queuing is of course better than not doing anything at all with your extra money!
Finally, note that while getting more raxes eventually comes out on top in number of units, there's a time-delay involved. This is a big plus for the queue-method. More raxes, however, is way more useful in the lategame, when army re-production as fast as possible becomes an issue. So, for early game, when having units RIGHT NOW is important, queue. For late game, when remaking units FAST is important, extra rax(es). For highest total amount of units somewhere in the midgame, extra rax(es).
I don't care which one you do, but now you know the pros and cons of both and can make up your mind yourself.
This is just plain wrong and demonstrably inferior. Consider two players player Q and layer X. Player Q queues units, player X doesn't, and builds extra buildings with excess money.
Let N be the ideal number of marines, if no mistakes made.
After first slip up Q queues 4 marines and X builds a baracks and a marine. PlayerQ: N-4 Marines (since he now has 4 in queue) PlayerX: N-3 Marines (1 more marine and now has an extra baracks)
After they slip up again Q continued to make extra marines and has money to replenish his queue, so he's still down 4. X can use the extra barracks to catch up.
Q: N-4 X: N-3 after he catches up.
So at a constant income of 200 mins per marine cycle, X is always ahead by 1 marine.
But in the real world, your economy is expanding, so lets see what happens if your income goes up by 25% and you continue to slip up.
Player Q can use the extra money from three cycles to build a barracks. (So would the ideal case) so he's still at N-4.
Player X can immediately start making extra marines three cycles earlier. and is actually able to catch up to the ideal case and now has N marines.
In a more realistic world, player X could choose to also stay 4 marines down after the first slip-up, and rather than buying "slip up insurance" for 200 minerals. Could buy two bunkers at his ramp or for an offensive push and suffer fewer losses. He could start his expansion earlier, or get an ebay and start an upgrade earlier. There are so many things those 200 minerals could be doing now to help right away rather than chilling in a queue just in case you screw up again later.
If player X and player Q clash, player X has two bunkers and player Q has 4 marines queued, who's going to have more marines in the end?
Queuing is worse than not spending your money, because at least not spending is above board, you can see and correct that problem. Queuing makes it looks like you're using your money when you actually aren't.
When you queue, you lose and say "Why did I lose? I macro'ed perfectly and kept my money down". Well you lost because you had 800 minerals stuck in queue while your opponent had the same 800 minerals in real units that shoot real bullets right now, and kill off the few units you did make.
these two ideas are NOT mutually exclusive. if you are keeping your money low AND you are not queueing units, that's good macro. the whole point of keeping your money low is that you don't want money, you want units. and queued units eat money without giving you units right away. it's as if your money has vanished into a vortex. it'll be back later.
although i would say that for someone in bronze league who kept forgetting to make stuff, queueing units might actually be better than stubbornly saying "queueing is bad! no queueing!"
On December 18 2010 05:09 gwombat wrote: these two ideas are NOT mutually exclusive. if you are keeping your money low AND you are not queueing units, that's good macro. the whole point of keeping your money low is that you don't want money, you want units. and queued units eat money without giving you units right away. it's as if your money has vanished into a vortex. it'll be back later.
although i would say that for someone in bronze league who kept forgetting to make stuff, queueing units might actually be better than stubbornly saying "queueing is bad! no queueing!"
I agree that it can be an effective crutch. But players should realize that it IS a crutch for their broken macro. Just like a real crutch is an effective tool for a broken leg. Just make sure you aren't trying to convince yourself that your leg ain't broken or that thing you're leaning on isn't a crutch.
Also.. Queuing units is the SAME as not spending your money. You're just taking the dollars sitting in the top right corner waiting to be spent, and having them wait to be spent in a barracks, since you haven't really spent your money on a marine until he pops out ready to shoot stuff. Until he pops out, you can cancel the marine at any time and spend it on something else, just like leaving the 50 mins in the top right bank.
I don't think this is the way to teach it to anyone. It's important to do both of them at the same time, that's how you get good at macro. If you have the amount of money that you need to queue units to keep it low, then make more expansions and production buildings.
2500+ diamond t player here. i think that the two concepts are pretty similar, if not identical, because thinking about it, if you are queing units, then that means only part of the money you have spent is being used and in reality you have more money in your bank then it seems
keeping money low is basically saying that you should use as much of the money you have. and as i said earlier, queing units does not mean that the money is being used, hence we find that both the ideas are very similar to eachother.
I think we can agree that queued units don't do anything since they are in a queue. I disagree however about the unusefulness of production facilities. If you expo, or want to cut workers and make more units, or something like that, a spare rax is going to be more useful than a queue of rines.
On December 18 2010 00:47 Eeryck wrote: The problem with the statement that queuing is ok, is that it smacks in the face the concept of optimized play.
Optimized play is pretty much (from the very start of the game): 1. Are units producing from every structure, if yes goto 2; else make units 2. Do I have enough supply, if yes goto 3; else make supply 3. Do I still have extra money, if yes build a building/get an upgrade; else goto 1
By switching to a mentality that at some point queuing is ok moves away from this concept of optimized play. I breaks the simple structure that guarantees the most units out at any given time for your given ability.
It creates a new mentality, that it is "optimal" to invest in things that are delayed in order to allow for a human error element. This breaks the mindset of optimal play. In this new mindset you will start to micro longer and longer and need to que more and more. For the time it works for you it will set up this huge bad habit, since it will work in the short term. Then when you advance behind it and hit a wall because your opponents will have stuck with optimized play what will you do?
Where optimized play already allows for the human error element. It tells you if you have extra minerals after units are producing and supply is met then you build a building. Done! No new thinking involved. The simple pattern remains simple and you will learn to do it more quickly over time.
I think it would be more precise to say that optimized play is when you're constantly producing units from every structure, and your next depot/pylon/overlord finishes just before you need it, and you have no extra money because you are constantly getting new production facilities and upgrades at the right time.
It's likely that no human is actually capable of perfectly optimized play, because there's always some little thing you could do better. The real question is, when you screw up, when you fall off the thread of perfectly optimized play, what is the smallest, least impactful mistake you could make?
Now, obviously it's best to have exactly one unit building in each production facility at all times, but if you're going to make mistakes (and you are - everyone does) which do you prefer: some amount of queuing (never more than one queued unit per structure), or the lost production time that inevitably results either from waiting for the previous unit to finish building before building a new one, or from being distracted at the precise moment that your round of production finishes? I tend to think that some small amount of queuing is better than losing any production time. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I really don't think so.
Having actually read the OP, I think queuing is preferable to letting your money float, but it's like asking me whether I want to blast a shotgun into my left foot or my right foot.
I'd say, a better option than queuing is if your money is getting high, just send one scv to expand, and several more to build more production fac. Even if your macro is imperfect (as it often is), having a better INFRASTRUCTURE that you can use even occasionally is preferrable to having a crappy one that you use constantly. Obviously, it only depends how much better your infrastructure is, and how well you can macro to begin with, but the higher infrastructure is definitely a better investment than queuing.
i like this post ^^ cause im some way those buildings actully have a posiblity to do something. where as teh qued units can do nothing. and if you do run low on money because you have to many production failitys. your atleast keeping your money low.. and its not like you built an obscean amount of buildings. just a little more then enough.
On December 18 2010 00:47 Eeryck wrote: The problem with the statement that queuing is ok, is that it smacks in the face the concept of optimized play.
Optimized play is pretty much (from the very start of the game): 1. Are units producing from every structure, if yes goto 2; else make units 2. Do I have enough supply, if yes goto 3; else make supply 3. Do I still have extra money, if yes build a building/get an upgrade; else goto 1
By switching to a mentality that at some point queuing is ok moves away from this concept of optimized play. I breaks the simple structure that guarantees the most units out at any given time for your given ability.
It creates a new mentality, that it is "optimal" to invest in things that are delayed in order to allow for a human error element. This breaks the mindset of optimal play. In this new mindset you will start to micro longer and longer and need to que more and more. For the time it works for you it will set up this huge bad habit, since it will work in the short term. Then when you advance behind it and hit a wall because your opponents will have stuck with optimized play what will you do?
Where optimized play already allows for the human error element. It tells you if you have extra minerals after units are producing and supply is met then you build a building. Done! No new thinking involved. The simple pattern remains simple and you will learn to do it more quickly over time.
I think it would be more precise to say that optimized play is when you're constantly producing units from every structure, and your next depot/pylon/overlord finishes just before you need it, and you have no extra money because you are constantly getting new production facilities and upgrades at the right time.
It's likely that no human is actually capable of perfectly optimized play, because there's always some little thing you could do better. The real question is, when you screw up, when you fall off the thread of perfectly optimized play, what is the smallest, least impactful mistake you could make?
Now, obviously it's best to have exactly one unit building in each production facility at all times, but if you're going to make mistakes (and you are - everyone does) which do you prefer: some amount of queuing (never more than one queued unit per structure), or the lost production time that inevitably results either from waiting for the previous unit to finish building before building a new one, or from being distracted at the precise moment that your round of production finishes? I tend to think that some small amount of queuing is better than losing any production time. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I really don't think so.
Not true. With every production cycle you spend putting units in queues where they aren't actively producing, the more money and production time you lose. Essentially, after a certain number of production cycles, you will have wasted a certain amount of minerals/time that would have been equivalent to setting up an additional structure and producing out of it, even with gaps.
If you routinely have 1 unit queued for at least half a production cycle (e.g. You create a marine and halfway as it's done you create another) it'd be better to stop queuing and put up another barracks or a reactor.
If you think about it this way, let's say your income is 125 minerals per minute and your production facilities are capable of making one marine and one scv every minute. Ignoring the fact that your income rises (unless you're fully saturated) with each production cycle, we have a perfect situation. Every 4 cycles, we must use 100 minerals to build a supply depot, and every cycle, we gain 25 minerals.
Now let's imagine instead that our production is the same but our income is 175 per minute. This suggests that we're able to queue one marine every cycle, then one SCV, etc. After 3 cycles we've suddenly queued 3 units; 150 minerals. What if we just made another barracks after 3 cycles? We'd increase production, and we'd have 2 marines and 1 SCV every cycle. Something tricky happens and we have to cut marine production from one barracks for a few seconds after each cycle to get minerals for supply, but this is still better than queuing.
Thus, after 6 production cycles, if we queue we've made 6 marines and 6 SCVs, with no money. If we use that money for a barracks we're looking at, let's say, 7 marines and 6 SCVs, with money. (pretend it takes 2 cycles to complete the barracks)
EDIT: in this situation, let's say we want to maintain constant SCV production. This means we need to use the barracks at around 67% efficiency to maintain enough minerals to not get supply blocked every 3 cycles. Thus, this means that, for the first production cycle after the barracks goes up we'll have 2 marines at 1:20 and 1 SCV, with 1 SCV 33% percent complete. We should also have roughly 33 minerals saved; this will go towards a supply depot after the third cycle.
On December 19 2010 03:56 Matrijs wrote: The real question is, when you screw up, when you fall off the thread of perfectly optimized play, what is the smallest, least impactful mistake you could make?
The least impactful response when your macro is imperfect is to make more production structures. Sometimes expanding with the extra money is the better choice, and I actually kind of prefer this option because it can allow you to turn your macro mistake into a big advantage, but even if he busts it and you die, I think it can make that game more educational for you.
On December 18 2010 00:47 Eeryck wrote: The problem with the statement that queuing is ok, is that it smacks in the face the concept of optimized play.
Optimized play is pretty much (from the very start of the game): 1. Are units producing from every structure, if yes goto 2; else make units 2. Do I have enough supply, if yes goto 3; else make supply 3. Do I still have extra money, if yes build a building/get an upgrade; else goto 1
By switching to a mentality that at some point queuing is ok moves away from this concept of optimized play. I breaks the simple structure that guarantees the most units out at any given time for your given ability.
It creates a new mentality, that it is "optimal" to invest in things that are delayed in order to allow for a human error element. This breaks the mindset of optimal play. In this new mindset you will start to micro longer and longer and need to que more and more. For the time it works for you it will set up this huge bad habit, since it will work in the short term. Then when you advance behind it and hit a wall because your opponents will have stuck with optimized play what will you do?
Where optimized play already allows for the human error element. It tells you if you have extra minerals after units are producing and supply is met then you build a building. Done! No new thinking involved. The simple pattern remains simple and you will learn to do it more quickly over time.
I think it would be more precise to say that optimized play is when you're constantly producing units from every structure, and your next depot/pylon/overlord finishes just before you need it, and you have no extra money because you are constantly getting new production facilities and upgrades at the right time.
It's likely that no human is actually capable of perfectly optimized play, because there's always some little thing you could do better. The real question is, when you screw up, when you fall off the thread of perfectly optimized play, what is the smallest, least impactful mistake you could make?
Now, obviously it's best to have exactly one unit building in each production facility at all times, but if you're going to make mistakes (and you are - everyone does) which do you prefer: some amount of queuing (never more than one queued unit per structure), or the lost production time that inevitably results either from waiting for the previous unit to finish building before building a new one, or from being distracted at the precise moment that your round of production finishes? I tend to think that some small amount of queuing is better than losing any production time. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I really don't think so.
First of all, producing units from every structure is not a necessary part of optimized play. There are times where you want to be spending your money on more production or on an expansion, because it will benefit you later with a higher unit count. Best in BW did this really well (his macro was the "Best" >_>)
Also, I don't know why you really have to choose. You should just work on getting your timing down to where you queue for no more than half a second on one end and have idle time by no more than half a second on the other, at least for the units you typically make (I don't think that a Protoss needs to be overly concerned on how long it takes a Carrier to finish, really). If you can't at least do this with workers, you're probably doing it wrong.
This thread doesn't warrant 15 pages of responses. What do you do when your money is really high to bring it down? You could queue up 4 rounds of marines, and then oops 30 seconds later you're back to your money being really high, but you have nowhere else to queue units. Or, you could build enough production facilities to match your income.
EPT
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