• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 23:51
CEST 05:51
KST 12:51
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
Serral wins Maestros of the Game 213ByuL, and the Limitations of Standard Play3Team Liquid Map Contest #22: Results and Winners7Code S Season 2 (2026): RO4 and Finals Preview12TL.net Map Contest #22 - Voting & Ladder Map Selection7
Community News
MC vs IdrA, Boxer vs Nal_rA to be Legacy Matches @ BlizzCon315.0.16 Hotfix (June 30) - Balance + Bug Fixes36Weekly Cups (June 22-28): Zergs thrive in new patch5[TLMC] Summer 2026 Ladder Map Rotation05.0.16 patch for SC2 goes live (8 worker start)99
StarCraft 2
General
How to Block Australia, Brazil, Singapore Servers Server Blocker 5.0.16 Hotfix (June 30) - Balance + Bug Fixes Serral wins Maestros of the Game 2 Weekly Cups (June 22-28): Zergs thrive in new patch
Tourneys
Vespene Cup #1 — $300+ USD, July 10 HomeStory Cup 29 Douyu Cup 2026: $20,000 Legends Event (June 26-28) Crank Gathers Season 4: BW vs SC2 Team League RSL Revival: Season 6 - Qualifiers and Main Event
Strategy
[G] Having the right mentality to improve
Custom Maps
New Map Maker - Looking for Advice - Love or Hate Work In Progress Melee Maps [D]RTS in all its shapes and glory <3
External Content
The PondCast: SC2 News & Results Mutation # 532 Nuclear Family Mutation # 531 Experimental Artillery Mutation # 530 One For All
Brood War
General
Farewell Beloved Starcraft (Youtube Videos) BW General Discussion FlaShFTW vs A.Alm Grudge Match Event BGH Auto Balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/ ASL 22 Proposed Map Pool
Tourneys
Escore Tournament StarCraft Season 2 The Casual Games of the Week Thread [Megathread] Daily Proleagues [ASL21] Grand Finals
Strategy
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Creating a full chart of Zerg builds Relatively freeroll strategies Why doesn't anyone use restoration?
Other Games
General Games
Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Nintendo Switch Thread Dawn of War IV Summer Games Done Quick 2026! ZeroSpace at Steam NextFest - Last free demo
Dota 2
Looking for a Dota Mentor Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug
TL Mafia
NeO.D_StephenKing vs This Guy From 1 Million Dance TL Mafia Community Thread TL Mafia Power Rank Vanilla Mini Mafia
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread Canadian Politics Mega-thread The Games Industry And ATVI Men's Fashion Thread
Fan Clubs
The HerO Fan Club! The herO Fan Club!
Media & Entertainment
Movie Discussion! Series you have seen recently... [Req][Books] Good Fantasy/SciFi books [TV/BOOK] *SPOILERS* Game of Thrones Discussion
Sports
2024 - 2026 Football Thread McBoner: A hockey love story Formula 1 Discussion TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 Cricket [SPORT]
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
How to clean a TTe Thermaltake keyboard? Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
The Automated Ban List
Blogs
Listen To The Coaches!
TrAiDoS
An Exploration of th…
waywardstrategy
I'm an arrogant trash talke…
FlaShFTW
Gauntlet SC2: A Retrospectiv…
Ctone23
ramps on octagon
StaticNine
Funny Nicknames
LUCKY_NOOB
Evil Gacha Games and the…
ffswowsucks
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 33662 users

[G] How to win - The ETA-Concept - Page 5

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
Post a Reply
Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next All
Nate.F
Profile Joined April 2011
918 Posts
January 04 2012 14:44 GMT
#81
great write-up. wealth of knowledge right there.
NeWeNiyaLord
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
Norway2474 Posts
January 04 2012 14:47 GMT
#82
Ah seriously good read 6/5 stars for you my friend! thanks for taking the time for making this. This should maybe be stickied in the strategy section!
This is where we begin. Show your true self, Battosai.
kirdie
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
Germany221 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-01-04 14:47:57
January 04 2012 14:47 GMT
#83
Great guide but I think most of it is rather common sense (although I may be guilty of going 5 base vs 2 in ZvP and ZvT and then I'm angry when I lose :-)).
ComaDose
Profile Blog Joined December 2009
Canada10357 Posts
January 04 2012 15:00 GMT
#84
I made my relatively new friend read it.
Its that star sense. If you know your opponents ETA you can adjust yours to survive and capitalize.
I liked the part about the billions of possibilities.
BW pros training sc2 is like kiss making a dub step album.
Ravomat
Profile Joined September 2010
Germany422 Posts
January 04 2012 15:02 GMT
#85
On January 04 2012 22:15 AnalThermometer wrote:
I think any ETA concept needs to really be ETATI to succeed in practice, with Time and Information as equally important resources. The turtle example is kind of silly without the inclusion of the time resource for many reasons.


I don't quite agree with this. ETA is a status at a specific point in time. That means your ETA is constantly changing and time is already being taken into account.

Information is a little tricky. I'd define it as a checkpoint or trigger. When you get information sometimes you have to stop what you're currently doing and adjust to what your opponent is doing while at other times you have to change nothing at all. It depends on your build. If you play blindly you risk investing too much in the wrong department. So information is required before making an investment otherwise it's a risk.
Childplay
Profile Joined October 2011
Canada263 Posts
January 04 2012 15:05 GMT
#86
wow, thats really detailed, great guide
aiuradun
Profile Joined February 2011
Denmark115 Posts
January 04 2012 15:58 GMT
#87
wow great read this is actually a really good and somehow simple way to explain the core strategic aspect of the game to new players as well without being overly specefic with specefic siturations even though this also applies to those.

thank you for writing this :-)
ShObiT
Profile Joined September 2011
Dominican Republic39 Posts
January 04 2012 15:58 GMT
#88
Loved the read! Nice way to explain things.

Keep the good work.
The Status "Quo" Is just an attemp to stop the change and evolutions of the free minded.
Theovide
Profile Joined September 2010
Sweden914 Posts
January 04 2012 16:23 GMT
#89
Sweet post, though I had a hard time not thinking ETA as estimated time of arrival. Either way I liked the way you put things, and I think that the concept that tastosis invented (ie "when ahead get more ahead") can be kind of misleading unless you put it in the way you did. (IE not go for another base if you are a base a head, but go for getting a head in the other aspects as well, because when you are a head in all aspects you are nearly garantueed the win.)
strongandbig
Profile Blog Joined October 2010
United States4858 Posts
January 04 2012 16:45 GMT
#90
First, thanks for taking the time to write this up - I think a link to this thread may be a much better response to low level players than the standard "macro better." This thread does a lot of explaining why that's important.

Second, this reminds me a lot of the central concepts of a lot of the day9 dailies, at least the more overview-ey ones rather than the ones where he talks about a specific strategy.

Third, I think you shouldn't worry about the time aspect of strategy that some people were criticizing. Time is just a resource like minerals and gas - or rather, mineral-time and gas-time (having minerals or gas earlier is worth more, since it could be earlier econ, tech, or army). It's just another little plus to be invested in econ, tech, or army and as such is already accounted for in the guide.
"It's the torso" "only more so!"
FenneK
Profile Joined November 2010
France1231 Posts
January 04 2012 17:32 GMT
#91
such a smart way of explaining the game
good luck have batman
sAfuRos
Profile Joined March 2009
United States743 Posts
January 04 2012 17:41 GMT
#92
Your illustration to demonstrate econ advantage (toss 6 base vs terran 2) is extremely misleading for those who take your word. The picture as shown would be a clear win for the toss. Furthermore, it oversimplifies the game, as having lots of bases with no indication of time or when bases were established cannot be blanket statemented as "will have less army". There are PLENTY of times where being multiple bases up also means you have a much higher army

What has happened in the game to allow you to get so far ahead? You FE'd and defended 1 base all in and he stayed? You ninja expod quick and he didn't notice? These are the types of factors that impact such a scenario, just as you say in your graph with "Time vs Understand of why loss"
sAfuRos // twitch.tv/sAfuRos // contact for coaching
TidusX.Yuna
Profile Blog Joined July 2011
United States239 Posts
January 04 2012 17:43 GMT
#93
Wow, this is brilliant. Great write up.
Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality!
Symbioth
Profile Joined October 2011
Poland103 Posts
January 04 2012 17:44 GMT
#94
This is basicly the best guide on TL.net I have read. Well written, very concise, coherent, concrete, useful and accurate at the same time.
Grumbels
Profile Blog Joined May 2009
Netherlands7032 Posts
January 04 2012 17:52 GMT
#95
When thinking about build orders, I feel like mechanics and micro can simply be abstracted or put into the army category. That is to say, if you have excellent micro your army strength is just higher. I think technology too can be put into 'army'. Now you only have two factors to keep in mind: do I spend on something that will help later, or help now.

I think a good approach for creating a generic game plan is to know how your investments will pay off in comparison to your opponent's investments. For instance, investing a lot into economy when your opponent is hardly doing so will be pointless, as you only have to get slightly better economy to gain an advantage. You might have the potential of getting a great advantage, but as you only need a little one, and the game is supposed to be balanced, you can almost count on this being the wrong decision.

If you build a lot of army and your opponent can counter it with almost as much army, but a little bit more economy, you have usually made the wrong decision. This is because economy gives you benefits later on, so it will usually be the case you can have more army than your opponent if from that point on both of you keep investing into army. Maybe your opponent would have been better off simply investing everything into army, nothing into economy, so that with your more 'balanced' approach, you would lose out.
This is a bit of a generic way of thinking about RTS games though. I feel like the only match-up where this really plays out this way is ZvZ and PvP, both match-ups with little defender's advantage. A race like terran can so easily defend a lot of attacks that investing into army is virtually pointless. Unless you use your army investment to secure more economy and prevent third bases. But this is already too specifically about Starcraft 2, not a generic RTS, so the abstraction stops working as well, I feel.

One should consider army investment though. Usually mind games are a lot about: "if I invest a bit more into long-term, I can still hold off his army and gain an advantage later on". And your opponent will think the same, unless he decides to be tricky and make assumptions about his enemy's choices and decides to all-in or go for even more pure economy/tech. But how well this works depends on scouting, on race specifics, and the dynamics of it change wildly with different races/strategies. It's a good perspective to keep in mind though.
Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come o' goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don't bite; them's my views--amen, so be it.
palanq
Profile Blog Joined December 2004
United States761 Posts
January 04 2012 19:00 GMT
#96
I've explained SC to friends before using the ETA concept; it's quite nice. You can define a lot of the common vocabulary people use to describe SC using it. The ETA allocation space can be viewed as a triangle (or 2-simplex) where at every point in the game you're choosing where to put your money (there are some restrictions on how you can move around inside the triangle there too but we can ignore those). So you could make a cool figure out of those.

Your choice of ETA allocation forms the basis of your strategy. Everything else you do (micro, positioning, expansion placement, even general macro smoothness) can be classified as tactics. Scouting is important so you can pick the right strategy; mechanics are important so you can execute tactics properly.

For the economy vs. army+tech axis, these are "greedy," "safe," and "aggressive." Greedy play emphasizes economy, perhaps even to a fault. Aggressive play (sometimes "cheese") can be low-tech or high-tech aggression, but has very little economy focus and is designed to kill plays that are too greedy. Safe play is somewhere in the middle of the space. All such designations are relative to your opponent; opening forge-nexus PvZ is safe vs. 13pool, but greedy vs. 9pool; doing a 3gate expand is typically a very safe or aggressive build, but against a 1 gas protoss PvP it might be rather greedy.

For the tech vs. no tech axis, the interactions are complex and don't have any real rules to generalize from; tech can generally substitute for army in some situations (if all you have is bio vs. a templar-heavy army, maybe all you need is more bio, not ghost/EMP), and in others you need some lower tech thing to fend of other tech aggression (e.g. detection).

(two axes in the 2-simplex should span the space of possible income allocations :p)
time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana
acrimoneyius
Profile Blog Joined June 2010
United States983 Posts
January 04 2012 19:50 GMT
#97
Very cool thread, I will show this to my newbie friends who are just learning the game.
tehemperorer
Profile Blog Joined June 2010
United States2183 Posts
January 04 2012 21:09 GMT
#98
Great guide, I love hearing from GM players... I can use this because it makes clear things that I did think about but wasn't sure, didn't think about and never knew, all in a concise manner (even came with a mnemonic!)
Knowing is half the battle... the other half is lasers.
Draconicfire
Profile Joined May 2010
Canada2562 Posts
January 04 2012 21:13 GMT
#99
Great guide. I've been having issues lately where I just straight up lose since my econ is too good and my army is too bad. Will probably start to use an ETA system to figure out when I should be focusing more on army.
@Drayxs | Drayxs.221 | Drayxs#1802
ApocAlypsE007
Profile Blog Joined January 2011
Israel1007 Posts
January 04 2012 22:13 GMT
#100
Felo I have a question. Maybe the answer is obvious but I still would like to hear your opinion. What is your reaction if the ETA meter of your enemy looks something like this:
E+++
T+++++++
A+++?
Like a Terran who goes heavy with Banshees and BFH?
I'm playing the game, the one that will take me to my end, i'm waiting for the rain, TO WASH-- WHO I AM!!!
Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next All
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
Replay Cast
00:00
Crank Gathers S4: Qualifiers
LiquipediaDiscussion
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
RuFF_SC2 230
ProTech129
SpeCial 127
PiLiPiLi 38
StarCraft: Brood War
Leta 65
Bale 27
Icarus 11
Dota 2
LuMiX1
League of Legends
Doublelift4070
JimRising 739
Counter-Strike
minikerr54
Other Games
summit1g4969
C9.Mang0472
WinterStarcraft394
ViBE220
Maynarde140
UpATreeSC38
JuggernautJason12
Organizations
Dota 2
PGL Dota 2 - Main Stream119
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
[ Show 12 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• Migwel
• sooper7s
StarCraft: Brood War
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
League of Legends
• Jankos854
• Stunt315
Upcoming Events
HomeStory Cup
7h 9m
Replay Cast
20h 9m
HomeStory Cup
1d 7h
OSC
1d 9h
WardiTV Weekly
3 days
The PondCast
4 days
Replay Cast
5 days
CrankTV Team League
5 days
Replay Cast
5 days
CrankTV Team League
6 days
[ Show More ]
Replay Cast
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

Escore Tournament S3: W1
Douyu Cup 2026
Murky Cup 2026

Ongoing

IPSL Spring 2026
Acropolis #4
CSL Season 21: Qualifier 2
SCTL 2026 Spring
HSC XXIX
XSE Pro League 2026
IEM Cologne Major 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 2
CS Asia Championships 2026
Asian Champions League 2026
IEM Atlanta 2026
PGL Astana 2026
BLAST Rivals Spring 2026

Upcoming

CSL 2026 Summer (S21)
Escore Tournament S3: W2
ASL Season 22:Wild Card Qualifier
CSLAN 4
Blizzard Classic Cup 2026
SC4ALL II: StarCraft II
Kung Fu Cup 2026 Grand Finals
RSL Revival: Season 6
CranK Gathers Season 4: BW vs SC2 Team League
Light Tournament 2026
Eternal Conflict S2 Finale
Eternal Conflict S2 E3
Eternal Conflict S2 E2
Heroes Pulsing #3
Eternal Conflict S2 E1
FISSURE Playground #5
BLAST Open Fall 2026
Esports World Cup 2026
BLAST Bounty Summer 2026
BLAST Bounty Summer Qual
Stake Ranked Episode 3
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2026 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.