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[H] How to avoid the Midgame Macro Meltdown? - Page 2

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
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Rasera
Profile Joined November 2011
Canada96 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-03-19 18:48:51
March 19 2012 18:40 GMT
#21
The probes and pylons thing that day[9] tries to teach is a good lesson to start with and recall as you continue playing, but after simply massing enough games, it starts to lose its merit.

A better approach to improvement would be to hammer out what another TL poster referred to as "The Macro Cycle" in the article on this link here, regarding perfecting mechanics.

To give a quick summary, the macro cycle is all the steps you should do in terms of macro before worrying about other things, such as microing, or positioning, or scouting, etc.

Just as a simple example, early game (about 15 - 20ish supply):

15 second repeats
1) Nexus
2) Gateway
3) Supply

Basically, that says that every 15 seconds, first check your nexus to make sure probes are building; if not build one, and if the last one in the queue is about a quarter-way done, queue another. Same goes for gateway or warpgates when the time comes. Finally, check your supply, if you are edging on your supply cap, build another pylon.

This cycle takes about 5ish seconds to complete through (at first); take me maybe 2 seconds to cycle through the hotkeys. If you can keep on eye on the in-game timer, and do this cycle on the time suggested, you'll never miss a probe, or warp-in. The cycle comes with practice though, as with most things in SC2. The best part is you can decrease the length of time between the cycles after you get used to doing it, which allows you to be even more on top of warp-ins, probes and supply. It also makes you very aware of warp-gate and the times it's available, simply by looking at how much time is left on them.

Special note on supply: most people will give common food placements for pylons, but it gets slightly wonky depending on build. A good rule of thumb is to figure out how much army is currently building + 2 x number of warpgates + 2 x number of nexus. If this number is within 2 of your max supply, build a pylon.

Example1: 14 supply on a 12 gateway; Gateway will finish in about 45 seconds, and a probe is in production currently. If I built a pylon now, it would finish 20 seconds before the gate does, and I would be on 15 supply. 18 - 15 = 3; too early.
EDIT: Building supply too early is not that big of a mistake. It's better too have too much supply than too little, but don't go overboard.

Example2: 15 supply on 12 gateway; gateway should finish in about 25 seconds, and a probe is in production currently. Pylon will not finish before gateway starts building units, so 2 for the zealot + another probe = 18 supply; build pylon now to avoid supply block.

It works and you become increasingly faster with it as you practice it. The general rule of thumb for adding on more supply is 1 pylon per base number: 1 pylon for 1 base, 2 pylons on 2 base, 3 pylons when colossi start popping up (usually on 3 base by this point).

Bit to take in and maybe too much for what's needed to get out of bronze, but I can assure you that this is an oversimplified way of how the pros look at macro, and what they do.
"Sir, the Yamato Cannon is fully charged and ready." "Excellent! Now, aim it at that Zealot's face."
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