EPTThanks for the advice and inspiration. I've always felt it's been hard to perfect my macro tactics while playing live.
Practice drills? - Page 2
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Deleuze
United Kingdom2102 Posts
Thanks for the advice and inspiration. I've always felt it's been hard to perfect my macro tactics while playing live. | ||
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Holcan
Canada2593 Posts
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L_Master
United States8017 Posts
On February 18 2011 03:32 Eknoid4 wrote: Ladder and watching your replays is the best way to improve, period. Your bronze friends are gonna be mad when they are happily at their 7 minute checkpoint vs a real person only to find out their opponent has proxy'd 5 barracks that have never been discovered because they dont scout because computers are predictable. You play how you practice. That's the problem with those kinds of drills. They aren't realistic at all, and the hardest part about learning to macro for new players is the fact that somebody is attacking them while they are trying to remember everything. Multitasking is the biggest hurdle to overcome for sc2 and you don't learn it when you remove risk from everything else you do. On February 18 2011 03:56 Masq wrote: I'd suggest just practicing late game management, 3-4 bases with full production capabilities. This is where you will learn the most, in my opinion. Just by playing normally, you will quickly get the first several minutes down easily. However, you won't get nearly as much playtime in the end game, where your actual gameplay is likely the weakest. Things like practicing APM, practicing a build meticulously, will not help you improve. You will make mistakes, plain and simple. This is especially true in Platinum/Bronze/Silver, etc. But you want to be as consistent as possible. As previously mentioned, if you feel a particular area of your game is weak, try to find a custom map for it. IE: MnM micro. I disagree. When I first started playing BW seriously a year or so ago I was awful, like couldn't beat the computer awful. What did I do? I went and practiced macro. I had 3 priorities. Always make workers, follow a correct build/correct expansion timings, spend my money. I wouldn't move to priority 2 unless I was fulfilling priority one. I played about 150 games against the CPU this way and when I returned to ICCup I had no problems maintaining a D rank. The claim is made that you play how you practice, and while I understand where that is coming from I don't entirely agree. What happens when you "drill" like this is you make something a habit. It becomes automatic to you to go back and macro, to make pylons, to make probes. You develop a rhythm and a muscle memory for macro. At the most basic levels, people do not have trouble macroing because they are being attacked, they have trouble macroing because they have no sense of how often things happen or when they need new pylons etc. They don't watch supply numbers or have any internal feel for how often they need new pylons nor do they have an innate sense of when they need their next round of units or probe and don't tab through structures to see when another is needed. Yes, being attacked and harassed adds a new element to macro, and yes almost invariably if all you have done against is macro 200/200 vs easy CPU you'll probably skyrocket some minerals the first time you face harass. That however, is easily fixed by essentially doing another drill and forcing yourself in game to make macro the top priority, you don't deal with harass until your sure macro is solid. Yea, you'll get raped by harass a few times, but it won't be long before your totally used to macroing away, and have completely rid yourself of the urge to have to watch all the harass. Once you start getting solid fundamentals playing games is an excellent way to get better. However, at the most basic levels I don't think playing games is the greatest way to get better. For the beginning player there is too much to worry about, if he tries to get it all right, its invariably too much; and he end up doing everything very mediocre at best, and improves slowly. That is basically the entire reason drills exist: to make an aspect of your skill that is flawed and quickly improve it. Especially for beginners who have a hard time doing just one thing right, let alone 3 drills are a much quicker road to improvement because they can quickly and systematically develop solid fundamentals. Once those are solid, playing games because much better because fundamentals are second nature and your now worried about playing the game (i.e. strategy, unit compositions, positionings, timing, etc). Drills lose some of their potency because many of these are less tangible aspects that are more difficult to isolate and are better understood in the context of the game as a whole. | ||
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manicshock
Canada741 Posts
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Eknoid4
United States902 Posts
On February 18 2011 03:58 jarhead271 wrote: I completely disagree. You have to realize what type of people you are working with here -- people with little or no experience with starcraft, or even RTS in general. Of course the drills are not realistic, but that doesn't mean they can't help you improve. Learning the basics is much harder when you have to worry about some noob canon rushing you. First, learn how to constantly produce probes and pylons, then try it against a real opponent. I can't count the number of pros I've heard say, "Practice your BOs against an easy comp." That's not realistic, so according to your logic it is worthless?..... The idea is that you focus on something simple at first and then, once you got that down, take it to the next level. OP, do you mind linking the particular multitasker you are using? focus on something simple in a real game and you will learn even more. When you practice your build order, you are practicing something that is never going to change and is going to have EXACT and DIRECT application into real matches. When you play a real game, you will do exactly what you did during those practice games vs easy computers. Anyone, and i mean anyone of average capability or greater, can learn to have perfect macro without an opponent. There is no stress, and it never changes. | ||
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1Lamb1Rice
United States435 Posts
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nyc863
200 Posts
How to beat it. First, get used to giving the probe the max two move commands using the mini-map (hot key the probe). So you just press 1 then click-click in the mini-map -- click as far horizontally as you can, and as far vertically from that (or vice versa). Ok that gives you about 10 seconds to do stuff in your base, and you can keep the camera on the base the whole time. To start with, just keep doing the 1-click-click thing while doing nothing but admiring your base. Eventually you get relaxed doing that. Then start building scvs, constructing buildings and hot-keying your building construction -- in each 10 second interval. Soon enough your brain starts to nag you about returning to the probe even when you struggle with something in your base. Somewhere in your head a timer is going off. Of course to win there are a few more things to phase in: making the medivac, moving it (again using the mini map) then quickly picking up the guy and move and shift-unload at the right spot. Each thing you do needs to be easily done in 50% of that safe probe move interval (some extra time spare for mistakes). You also need to mule regularly, and stop mining gas (or just stop mining) if your resources unbalance dramatically. Anyway what I am saying is don't give up on the multitasking trainer, it helps with many things. I'm not ready to do it on normal where you have to round off the movement of the probe, and have a short timer, but I found getting the easy level won was a big help to my ladder game. by far the biggest benefit this trainer has is to force your eyes down to the mini map every 10 seconds. You'll notice that straight away in your game, and wow is it helpful! | ||
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habermas
United Kingdom304 Posts
On March 02 2011 07:35 nyc863 wrote: Do the multi tasking trainer on easy again. You will feel great when you beat it. How to beat it. First, get used to giving the probe the max two move commands using the mini-map (hot key the probe). So you just press 1 then click-click in the mini-map -- click as far horizontally as you can, and as far vertically from that (or vice versa). Ok that gives you about 10 seconds to do stuff in your base, and you can keep the camera on the base the whole time. To start with, just keep doing the 1-click-click thing while doing nothing but admiring your base. Eventually you get relaxed doing that. Then start building scvs, constructing buildings and hot-keying your building construction -- in each 10 second interval. Soon enough your brain starts to nag you about returning to the probe even when you struggle with something in your base. Somewhere in your head a timer is going off. Of course to win there are a few more things to phase in: making the medivac, moving it (again using the mini map) then quickly picking up the guy and move and shift-unload at the right spot. Each thing you do needs to be easily done in 50% of that safe probe move interval (some extra time spare for mistakes). You also need to mule regularly, and stop mining gas (or just stop mining) if your resources unbalance dramatically. Anyway what I am saying is don't give up on the multitasking trainer, it helps with many things. I'm not ready to do it on normal where you have to round off the movement of the probe, and have a short timer, but I found getting the easy level won was a big help to my ladder game. by far the biggest benefit this trainer has is to force your eyes down to the mini map every 10 seconds. You'll notice that straight away in your game, and wow is it helpful! The purpose of the multitasking trainer is to... train your multitasking, not to win. If your goal is to "beat it on easy" you're doing it wrong. Actually your eyes should be on the probe for the most of the time, going back to base only when you have to. It doesn't matter if you win or lose as long as your multitasking improves. | ||
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nyc863
200 Posts
I don't think the idea is to have your eyes on the probe all the time, that isn't how I see high level POV scouting done anyway. What they do is send the probe and flick to it now and again, then when it is in the base they look for a longer interval, but then often queue up a bunch of moves and go back to their base to continue, rarely coming back to the probe unless it is to setup a new harass. They also give probe moves via the mini map. And that during the easiest part of the game, the start, with low APM needed. So it is overly harsh to insist the only way to get any value out of the multi tasking trainer map is to have your camera on the probe most of the time. | ||
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canikizu
4860 Posts
Do it over and over, you'll see the difference between you and the pro (it amazes me how 2 people start the game at the same time, but have so much difference after 10,15 minutes). If you keep trying it, you will begin to feel the "rhythm", you'll feel much more comfortable executing something blah blah you know the rest. Of course that it's best if you just focus on mimicking 1 particular favorite pro, because as you all know, pros have their own styles, and you can't feel the rhythm if you keep switching your tempo. | ||
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archwaykitten
90 Posts
StarCraft has very little downtime though. If you want to practice macro, you can do that throughout an entire StarCraft match (while simultaneously training other RTS skills like scouting and micro). You might want to run drills on specific micro plays though. You can learn how to stutter step on a training map rather than building up to that point in a real game. No matter how fond you are of the skill, you're not going to be stutter stepping for more than 5 percent of a real game (and other micro skills are generally far rarer than that). | ||
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boozoozoo
United States3 Posts
 Of course, one way to get good is to just diligently ladder, but these drills suit my style of learning. | ||
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Bubble-T
Australia105 Posts
On March 02 2011 12:38 nyc863 wrote: I don't think the idea is to have your eyes on the probe all the time, that isn't how I see high level POV scouting done anyway. What they do is send the probe and flick to it now and again, then when it is in the base they look for a longer interval, but then often queue up a bunch of moves and go back to their base to continue, rarely coming back to the probe unless it is to setup a new harass. They also give probe moves via the mini map. And that during the easiest part of the game, the start, with low APM needed. The probe represents everything you have to do during a game that is not in your base. It's your dropship or mutas, your main army, etc. etc. Do you see the pros micro their mutas using the minimap? Do they queue up a bunch of waypoints for their MMM ball? Treating it as though it's just a scouting probe is the wrong attitude. You should be using as few waypoints as possible and practising both flicking to it every now and again and focusing on it while keeping up your macro as needed, you need to be able to do both with your units in an actual game. Being able to beat it the way you are is a good start I guess but you should understand that you have much further to go. | ||
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TopRamen
United States96 Posts
In SC2 there are TONS of ways to cut off time in your builds. e.g. Stim Timing push, you have your army out side the enemy base as soon as stim finishes. Moving workers to a expansion as soon as its completed, moving workers to build things as soon as you have the money. You can always work on different timings. Other things I do, I record the timings of the other races. e.g. finding out how fast Protoss players can get a DT or VR out. What is the fastest a player can get higher tier units out? When will you get attacked by a Protoss who is performing a 4 gate all in? How about a 7 pool? bane bust? stim timing push? scv marine all in? etc. Theres lots of things you can do. | ||
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InZil
Canada57 Posts
Once you realize the potential you have, it's a matter of unlocking that potential. Most of what it takes to win SC2 is just mechanics. If you can minimize the use of your mouse by maximizing the use of your hotkeys, it buys you a lot of time to power through those mechanics. After you've improved your mechanics, you have much more time to work on the actual strategy. It sounds like they know what they are doing wrong (e.g. supply blocked). Play against a computer over and over until you win consistently without being supply blocked. Restart the game if you fail, up the difficulty if it's too easy. Once you master it, select something else and try to do both at the same time, without making a mistake, repeat. Personally I suffer from not using my hotkeys and have no time to do anything but hunt for stuff I need to click on. If you can do it with just the keyboard ONLY DO IT WITH THE KEYBOARD. As for the strategy/thinking part of the game, watch pro games or check out Day9 dailies. These are the fastest way to learn SC2 without actually playing, and they're generally entertaining at the same time. This is of course if you're serious about the game. If you want to be a moderate player just keep playing over and over and you'll learn empirically. But be warned it's easier to learn it right the first time then to break yourself of the old habits that won you some games, and go back to being terrible while you try to unlearn all the bad things you do, to reform your play to where you can improve even further. | ||
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Eknoid4
United States902 Posts
On March 05 2011 02:47 InZil wrote: The thing that initially accelerated my learning of Starcraft back in BW was watching pro games and realizing what you could do if you played right. Once you realize the potential you have, it's a matter of unlocking that potential. Most of what it takes to win SC2 is just mechanics. If you can minimize the use of your mouse by maximizing the use of your hotkeys, it buys you a lot of time to power through those mechanics. After you've improved your mechanics, you have much more time to work on the actual strategy. It sounds like they know what they are doing wrong (e.g. supply blocked). Play against a computer over and over until you win consistently without being supply blocked. Restart the game if you fail, up the difficulty if it's too easy. Once you master it, select something else and try to do both at the same time, without making a mistake, repeat. Personally I suffer from not using my hotkeys and have no time to do anything but hunt for stuff I need to click on. If you can do it with just the keyboard ONLY DO IT WITH THE KEYBOARD. As for the strategy/thinking part of the game, watch pro games or check out Day9 dailies. These are the fastest way to learn SC2 without actually playing, and they're generally entertaining at the same time. This is of course if you're serious about the game. If you want to be a moderate player just keep playing over and over and you'll learn empirically. But be warned it's easier to learn it right the first time then to break yourself of the old habits that won you some games, and go back to being terrible while you try to unlearn all the bad things you do, to reform your play to where you can improve even further. yeah i improved soooo much when i started watching how friggen much good players had. it made me realize how much more important keeping my money low was than leet dronescout micro | ||
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