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On January 25 2011 01:06 goiflin wrote:
I was under the impression that the AI would spread shots evenly so that it avoids overkill. My point in focusing the tanks was to take down a stalker instantly. If you right click twelve tanks on one stalker, do they all fire, or does it only allocate as many tanks as it'll take to kill the stalker instantly?
The AI allows Siege Tanks to target as they would normally (target closest attacking enemy) and then tells Siege Tanks to fire until the target is dead. If you select all your Siege Tanks and waypoint-up a bunch of Stalkers, they will focus down each Stalker in sequence, allocating only enough Siege Tanks that would kill each one. So, no, it does not "spread shots evenly." The AI literally only prevents Siege Tanks from firing at a target that is already dead.
On January 25 2011 01:11 Nuck wrote:
What about the TvZ matchup, if your playing Terran? You have to micro against banelings, no matter what your skill level is.
Or just have a lot more units.
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On January 25 2011 00:05 Offhand wrote:
^^ Who the hell uses banelings correctly in plat league? Any massable ground unit is "hard countered" by most of those options (collosus, tanks, etc).
Most lower level players enter a game with one plan in mind. They're going to make a unit, or a specific comp of units + Show Spoiler +Okay, okay, one kind of unit and attack at a probably late timing. The thing with late timings is, they're quite often counterable even if the other player is complete shit. Plat players don't know how to even react to getting attacked first, and that's where the cheesers advantage comes in at low level play.
You're dramatically underestimating the caliber of a platinum player. Not to say that they're great by any means, but to say that they "don't use banelings correctly" is just being class-ist. The quality of play overall has improved since launch and there are some decent platinum players out there that just have one or two glaring flaws that cause them to be stuck. If you had said silver league I'd agree.
That said, I have watched a fair amount of low-level play when I'm bored. No one in their right mind is going to argue that macro isn't the best place to start and the most obvious and important flaw. But you wouldn't believe some of the other mistakes people make.
Some things I've seen:
- Absolutely no keybindings. Maybe a hatch/nexus/cc. None for army.
- Half their army in one place when the other half is sitting in their base and there's a huge confrontation and they rush headlong into it.
- Guy pushes in their base and they had half of their army afraid of drops so it's sitting at their mineral line and it takes them 5 full seconds to get their army together and by that point they're basically dead.
- A-moving a respectable amount of lings into a zealot wall repeatedly.
- No scouting whatsoever. Map is completely dark to them.
- No clue how to handle things like banshees, DTs, cannon rushes, early pressure.
- Running a huge army of marines into a tank line or banelings.
- They basically never retreat.
All I'm saying is that yes, macro is the first and foremost thing. Most of them end up with 6000/4000 at some point during a longer game. But there are some things that we take for granted and seem like common sense that a bronze player just doesn't quite grasp.
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My twos team and the person I probably play the most SC with is a plat level zerg. There's still the more glaring issues of no one ever taking a third. No one reacting appropriately to any tech. Harass being absurdly effective mostly by accident and being completely defended also pretty much by accident.
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Well gee I feel like shit now for being in Platinum...
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This is pretty awesome to see. To add just a little bit of perspective. I started out in bronze and would always read the just macro advice.
What that meant to me at first was just macro on 1-base and you can win. Obviously that is not macro.
Then I thought ok expand at 7-minutes ish and just macro off of 2-base and you can win. Hmmm, nope not really past a certain level and this is still not good macro.
Looking at the econ graphs for this guy, you can see his economy is constantly growing for 17-minutes. He is on 5-bases at the 17-20 minute mark. I think that is the hardest concept for us newer players with respect to macro, is that it pretty much means that you have a constantly expanding economy.
As a silver level player I can macro well off of 1-base. I can macro well with a 7-minute expansion off of two base. This is still not good macro.
I am learning now how to macro with a FE build and a third at 10-minutes or so but I still don't have it down where I can keep constant production and my money spent. It is another level for me to get to that point. But at least now I understand that expanding well is a key concept to macro.
Summary/TLDR; Unfortunately at the lower levels a lot of players hold the idea of macro and expanding to be mutually exclusive. Most of us even looking at the econ graph would not quite notice that the econ never goes flat indicating a econ that stopped growing.
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I generally dislike the idea that people say "macro hard and you'll get into diamond", but it's just a blurred statement that really doesn't help users accomplish their overall goal in being able to hold off pushes, harass and generally have a good time. Sure, he may be a beast at Macroing, but that's only one aspect of the game and ultimately, those players don't want to just get into diamond, they want to earn a playstyle that suits them.
If we all become macro drones we might as well go back to Age of Empires 2.
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On January 24 2011 23:38 snazbaz wrote:
No this is just yourself trying to kid yourself that it's not the same thing so that you have an excuse to not improve your macro tasks.
So why is it I suddenly end up with a trust fund whenever I'm distracted from macro tasks for more than a few seconds, and yet said trust fund fails to appear if I'm left in peace until after I've taken a fourth*? If that's not a failure to multi-task, I don't know what is!
* At which point I fully accept my macro totally can't keep up with resource production unless I'm deliberately under-droned.
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On January 25 2011 01:59 TFB wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2011 23:38 snazbaz wrote:
No this is just yourself trying to kid yourself that it's not the same thing so that you have an excuse to not improve your macro tasks.
So why is it I suddenly end up with a trust fund whenever I'm distracted from macro tasks for more than a few seconds, and yet said trust fund fails to appear if I'm left in peace until after I've taken a fourth*? If that's not a failure to multi-task, I don't know what is! * At which point I fully accept my macro totally can't keep up with resource production unless I'm deliberately under-droned.
Because you ended up no longer macroing well? I mean, I totally understand the benefits of having strong multitask, but it's obvious that you're shifting your focus off of macro here, apparently playing in a way that not having macro'd in this time makes a difference, and claiming that multitask would've saved the day.
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[B]
You can compare it to chess in that regard. To play at a high level, you need both a deep understanding of strategy and very good tactical abilities. However, even if your understanding of strategy is very mediocre, you can still be a pretty good player just by calculating (macroing in SC terms) well, but it doesn't work the other way around. You can have a great understanding of strategy, if you're terrible at calculating, you'll never get to a remotely high level.
I'm a pretty high level chess player (2200+), and I'm not too sure about this analogy. I guess it kinda depends on what you define pretty good player as. I suspect that you would probably get to about 1400-1500 ELO (BTW for those who don't know chess ratings, a 1500 is probably the equivalent of Plat SC2.) and then hit a wall without ANY strategy, e.g., you don't castle, you don't play for control of the center, you don't have a plan. While tactics do play a huge role in chess (as macro does in starcraft), it cannot be described as everything.
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On January 25 2011 01:59 TFB wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2011 23:38 snazbaz wrote:
No this is just yourself trying to kid yourself that it's not the same thing so that you have an excuse to not improve your macro tasks.
So why is it I suddenly end up with a trust fund whenever I'm distracted from macro tasks for more than a few seconds, and yet said trust fund fails to appear if I'm left in peace until after I've taken a fourth*? If that's not a failure to multi-task, I don't know what is! * At which point I fully accept my macro totally can't keep up with resource production unless I'm deliberately under-droned.
Because when you distracted you are adding an extra task to your current multitasking (of workers, buildings, supply, army).
Now the extra stuff that is distracting you is probably not as important as those macro fundamentals so you must force yourself to prioritize the fundamentals FIRST. That's the whole point of the thread/OP link. Once you can do the fundamentals well 1) You will find you are winning all your games until plat/diamond 2) You can start to mix in other tasks prioritizing from the next most important (scouting).
If what you say is true (your macro is good if you are not distracted) then you should be able to play a similar build (one unit, 1-A to enemy base, no scouting) and win most of your games up to plat/diamond too.
Don't forget that keeping your minerals low is not the definition of good macro. If you are missing probes you won't even have the minerals in the first place for example. Same with queueing anything, not expanding at the right time.
The best way to check how good your macro is to find a fairly standard replay of a good player doing the same build you do and pause it at say 7 minutes and count how many units/structures/workers he has and then see how many you have at 7 minutes when you play it.
Obviously you want to find a replay where nothing unusual happened before this point.
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Almost all games are lost to macro or scouting.
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Yes he chose stalkers because they are safest to mass, yes it would be harder if you went pure marine. This doesn't invalidate his hypothesis. If you find it easier with stalkers then play protoss, there is no shame in that. If you want to stick with Zerg or Terran then do, just build a bit of everything.
A random mix of units will beat anything they have if you have a solid macro advantage.
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These things are what I find somewhat displeasing with StarCraft, until the highest level, it's still just a game of who is best at not forgetting to constantly produce probes.
I'd love it if unit production and inject larva could be put to autocast and the game be more of a game of decisions instead of a game of remembering to press e,s, or d every 17 gameseconds. This is of course less the case with Zerg.
I'd also like it better if you didn't want to constantly produce workers but there was some optimum to periodically pause at before you got an expo up. I'd rather have like that max saturation occured at 15-18 workers or something, that would really make it advanrageous to know when to temporary quit producing workers.
But yeah, the truth of this game is that just fielding the largest army, not knowing counters, not micro, not scouting, not knowing the opponents race and knowing when you can expect a cloaked banshee to arrive does make the game. Of course, if both players have relatively even macro, these things do come into play.
Though, this is only the case of ladder, if you know your opponent's history and you know he goes mass stalker all the time, a nice DT rush or mass immortals stops that adequately.
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On January 25 2011 02:58 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote:
These things are what I find somewhat displeasing with StarCraft, until the highest level, it's still just a game of who is best at not forgetting to constantly produce probes.
I'd love it if unit production and inject larva could be put to autocast and the game be more of a game of decisions instead of a game of remembering to press e,s, or d every 17 gameseconds. This is of course less the case with Zerg.
I'd also like it better if you didn't want to constantly produce workers but there was some optimum to periodically pause at before you got an expo up. I'd rather have like that max saturation occured at 15-18 workers or something, that would really make it advanrageous to know when to temporary quit producing workers.
But yeah, the truth of this game is that just fielding the largest army, not knowing counters, not micro, not scouting, not knowing the opponents race and knowing when you can expect a cloaked banshee to arrive does make the game. Of course, if both players have relatively even macro, these things do come into play.
Though, this is only the case of ladder, if you know your opponent's history and you know he goes mass stalker all the time, a nice DT rush or mass immortals stops that adequately.
Unless your definition of "highest level" is low diamond, you have no clue what you're talking about. Also, if someone actively practices their macro, they can reach that level in about a week or two. It's not rocket science.
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On January 25 2011 02:58 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote:
These things are what I find somewhat displeasing with StarCraft, until the highest level, it's still just a game of who is best at not forgetting to constantly produce probes.
I'd love it if unit production and inject larva could be put to autocast and the game be more of a game of decisions instead of a game of remembering to press e,s, or d every 17 gameseconds. This is of course less the case with Zerg.
I'd also like it better if you didn't want to constantly produce workers but there was some optimum to periodically pause at before you got an expo up. I'd rather have like that max saturation occured at 15-18 workers or something, that would really make it advanrageous to know when to temporary quit producing workers.
But yeah, the truth of this game is that just fielding the largest army, not knowing counters, not micro, not scouting, not knowing the opponents race and knowing when you can expect a cloaked banshee to arrive does make the game. Of course, if both players have relatively even macro, these things do come into play.
Though, this is only the case of ladder, if you know your opponent's history and you know he goes mass stalker all the time, a nice DT rush or mass immortals stops that adequately.
Well obviously StarCraft is the wrong game for you.
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On January 25 2011 02:58 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote:
These things are what I find somewhat displeasing with StarCraft, until the highest level, it's still just a game of who is best at not forgetting to constantly produce probes.
I'd love it if unit production and inject larva could be put to autocast and the game be more of a game of decisions instead of a game of remembering to press e,s, or d every 17 gameseconds. This is of course less the case with Zerg.
I'd also like it better if you didn't want to constantly produce workers but there was some optimum to periodically pause at before you got an expo up. I'd rather have like that max saturation occured at 15-18 workers or something, that would really make it advanrageous to know when to temporary quit producing workers.
But yeah, the truth of this game is that just fielding the largest army, not knowing counters, not micro, not scouting, not knowing the opponents race and knowing when you can expect a cloaked banshee to arrive does make the game. Of course, if both players have relatively even macro, these things do come into play.
Though, this is only the case of ladder, if you know your opponent's history and you know he goes mass stalker all the time, a nice DT rush or mass immortals stops that adequately.
It sounds like what you want is a turn-based strategy game, of which there are many quality games about. SC2 is not one of them though!
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I have to admit that macro will definitely get you to gold or low platinum...but if you rise in gold or platinum, people at the high end are really good...I'm currently a 2200 gold player, 4th in my division...and I'm, playing against 1-10 platinum players and macro isn't their problem, nor is it mine. I have recently switched form an agressive style to a more macro oriented style...and it has helped me win slightly more games...but where I am and the people I play...mass stalkers will certainly not win you the game.
When you first join a league, you're likely playing the lower-end of the league. A really low diamond player is not as good as me...I've played them before.
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Well to throw my 0.2 cents.
I got to diamond by mainly doing timing pushes (I play as terran) or outmacroing opponents. I kept the money low by building more supplies than I need so I could produce an army from building hotkeys when in the battle but I usually not built many workers.
I only advanced from league to league when I got better sense of the game and when I was playing more intensively. Now after a month of break from Starcraft I got demoted to platinum and because I play only several games a week I might be demoted to gold soon as well. My macro did not get that worse, I still usually have lower unspent money score than my opponent but my muscle memory deteriorated considerably (now 30 APM  ) and I die to shenanigans such as DT rush I had no trouble handling before.
So in my case I'd say playing standard games without all-ins or cheeses does get you to diamond eventually no matter what because you improve on general RTS skills
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The thing about this is that he was already good when he started the new account. When i started my US account I messed up placement and went 2-3, got placed in silver.
I did get cheesed a whole lot for the first 30 games or so, by which time I was in plat. because I was the better player I just played my macro style and won alot. However it wasn't really my macro that won the games but the fact that I know how to defend cheese and macro at the same time, defending silver/gold level cheese is easy if you scout properly and know whats coming.
I do believe that learning to macro will help you improve faster and you will get promoted eventually, but a plat/diamond/master level player will always be able to beat a silver/gold player because they are better, so its not a fair test.
The real test would to be to take a silver level player and coach them, teach them nothing but how to macro and see how fast they start to climb the ladder.
Simple fact is that even most diamond/master players can still improve their macro, its something which you really should never stop working on. it will take a very long time before anyone has perfect macro, even the pro's
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On January 25 2011 03:27 Malloy wrote:
I have to admit that macro will definitely get you to gold or low platinum...but if you rise in gold or platinum, people at the high end are really good...I'm currently a 2200 gold player, 4th in my division...and I'm, playing against 1-10 platinum players and macro isn't their problem, nor is it mine. I have recently switched form an agressive style to a more macro oriented style...and it has helped me win slightly more games...but where I am and the people I play...mass stalkers will certainly not win you the game.
When you first join a league, you're likely playing the lower-end of the league. A really low diamond player is not as good as me...I've played them before.
I assure you macro is still one of your most significant problems. I am mid diamond Protoss and low diamond/high plat Zerg on my other account and still consider my macro to be a big main area that I need to refine. The fact that you don't admit it being a significant problem is probably the real reason you are still in gold.
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EPT
