I'm finding the saturation time to be incredibly varied. I've hit Masters saturation speed consistently for main and nat, but I've ranged from Plat to Bronze for third.

Albeit the Bronze game was after I lost about 10-15 SCVs from drops. A Gold game had none of that, and I hit the 50 SCVs at 10 minutes benchmark, too.

Also, I'm glad I went back to step 1. I forgot how satisfying it is to make clueless standard players rage.

fengshaun

149 Posts

June 08 2013 20:45 GMT

#943

what exactly is saturation time supposed to gauge? How much worker production is missed?

JaKaTaKSc2

United States2787 Posts

June 08 2013 21:49 GMT

#944

Saturation Speed gauges your ability to saturate minerals quickly. This means you must produce workers quickly, defend from harass, and have your workers at the right place at the right time. That last one means having 16 workers on one base and 16 on another instead of 8 on one and 24 on the other. Workers are useless unless they are doing something, and putting them in the right place makes their "something" more effective.

Fiziks

United States59 Posts

June 10 2013 21:06 GMT

#945

Holy Crap. Just saw the Staircase view on GGTracker. This is so awesome. I feel like GG Tracker + Staircase + Core is already the ultimate improvement method, but man, once GGTracker gets User Defined Benchmarks it'll be all over.

JaKaTaKSc2

United States2787 Posts

June 11 2013 00:11 GMT

#946

Fiziks, what do you mean "User Defined Benchmarks"

Tuplex

80 Posts

June 11 2013 02:29 GMT

#947

Is the base considered "saturated" with 16 workers on minerals, or 24?

Antylamon

United States1981 Posts

June 11 2013 02:34 GMT

#948

On June 11 2013 11:29 Tuplex wrote:
Is the base considered "saturated" with 16 workers on minerals, or 24?

jcr2001

Singapore53 Posts

June 11 2013 04:19 GMT

#949

On June 11 2013 09:11 JaKaTaK wrote:
Fiziks, what do you mean "User Defined Benchmarks"

Maybe he means something like TheStaircase being fully integrated into ggtracker, negating the need for a separate spreadsheet altogether. At least, that's how I interpreted it.

Brainiac777

Canada1 Post

June 11 2013 08:39 GMT

#950

This concept seems so simplistic and easy. With Blizzard's new implementation of Unranked Matches, this fits in perfectly for teaching newbies like me. I see learning Starcraft 2 as:
1. TheStaircase
2. Build Orders
3. Unit Counters
4. Map Analysis
5. Micro

If you need, I will try to give you replays of my attempts at doing this concept, I main Protoss if that helps.

Beedebdoo

130 Posts

June 11 2013 14:41 GMT

#951

" - No more than b+1 supply structures in construction at a time, (where b = the number of mining bases) "
Shouldn't this be up in the The Rules section, rather than under Guidelines/Notes? At least it seems like a rule to me ^^

BTW, how will version 6.0 redefine TheStaircase? What will change? Looking at GGTracker it doesn't look like something currently part of TheStaircase, so I'm guessing it's pretty big?

EDIT:

On June 11 2013 09:11 JaKaTaK wrote:
Fiziks, what do you mean "User Defined Benchmarks"

I think he's talking about this suggestion on the GGTracker forums:
https://ggtracker.uservoice.com/forums/150981-general/suggestions/3917130-enable-user-defined-benchmarks

fengshaun

149 Posts

June 11 2013 16:54 GMT

#952

So, are injects completely removed from TheStaircase? What percent is a good percent for a pass?

JaKaTaKSc2

United States2787 Posts

June 11 2013 17:32 GMT

#953

ggtracker is a platform for metrics and coaching methods. TheStaircase is using that platform. The advantage of this situation is that I can choose and craft whichever benchmarks I feel are meaningful, where other coaches can do the same. Neither one of us have to show each other's benchmarks, and the metrics that ggtracker are absolutely sure about will be in the standard view. A great example of this is Saturation Speed. I personally feel that this metric is very important, however, there isn't at this time enough evidence for ggtracker as a whole to be convinced that it is meaningful enough to be in standard view. So we put it to the test with TheStaircase and maybe eventually the community as a whole accepts it as an important metric like Spending Skill is and then it becomes standard.

@Braniac
I think its really important to start micro/multitasking as soon as you get the basics (aka as soon as you start step 2). Multitasking is a very difficult part of Sc2 and working on it when you have simplified your side of the game is very helpful to making it easier when you allow the game to become more complex.

@jcr
After the beta period (which we are now in!) there will be TheStaircase page that will teach you how to do TheStaircase, give you tips on how to improve your weak areas, and monitor all the rules and benchmarks for you. (no spreadsheet required!) For now, we need as many people testing the beta and providing feedback and replays as possible!

Fiziks

United States59 Posts

June 11 2013 18:37 GMT

#954

@JaK: Don't quote me on this because I could be clearly misinformed, but from what I can tell, it looks like GGTracker is considering adding a feature that allows you to define Benchmarks that you want to hit. Then GGTracker will tell you whether you met or failed those benchmarks. For instance, I personally want to make it a benchmark for myself that I always hit 50 SCVs by 10 minutes. Not sure how it would work yet, but you would presumably define this in GGTracker somewhere and then at a glance it tells you whether or not you met/failed that benchmark.

Depending on how full featured they make this, it could seriously become an awesome tool with infinite possibilities. Beyond even just using it to learn to macro like a pro, you can then use it to perfect BO's, like let's say I saw Flash do a 2-Base Timing Push with X # of Marines, X Marauders, +1, and Stim at exactly 7:05 or whatever. I would love to set those exact benchmarks at 7:05 and see over 10 games how many times I hit that.

I'm not 100% sure whether they will do it, but I frequently go to their UserVoice Feedback page to browse through what other features they are working on and considering. This one was suggested a while ago and has been tagged as a "Planned" feature. Don't know if that means they are just "looking into it" and may still abandon it after research, but I really really hope they add this because it would be SOOOO insanely awesome.

JaKaTaKSc2

United States2787 Posts

June 11 2013 19:34 GMT

#955

@Fiziks
Creating metrics in ggtracker does take a bit of time, so programming in specific criteria like that seems like a time consuming but worth while endeavor. For instance, the number of workers over time would be a metric, once that was implemented and the framework was there for custom benchmarks you could adjust the number of workers and time etc. Although I feel that 50 workers at 10 minutes is pretty arbitrary and rigid. Saturation Speed is a much more flexible and meaningful metric IMO. I assume you disagree, and would love to hear your opinion on the matter.

dsjoerg

United States384 Posts

June 11 2013 19:40 GMT

#956

On June 12 2013 03:37 Fiziks wrote:
I'm not 100% sure whether they will do it, but I frequently go to their UserVoice Feedback page to browse through what other features they are working on and considering. This one was suggested a while ago and has been tagged as a "Planned" feature. Don't know if that means they are just "looking into it" and may still abandon it after research, but I really really hope they add this because it would be SOOOO insanely awesome.

Hi, GGTracker here. While we will do user-defined benchmarks at some point, there are a bunch of easier-to-implement projects that will come first, for example fully implementing TheStaircase, and adding stats like EAPM and Combat Effectiveness.

That said, user-defined benchmarks will be awesome!

With all the coding to be done, I'm never gonna get into Plat

Antylamon

United States1981 Posts

June 11 2013 19:42 GMT

#957

On June 12 2013 04:34 JaKaTaK wrote:
@Fiziks
Creating metrics in ggtracker does take a bit of time, so programming in specific criteria like that seems like a time consuming but worth while endeavor. For instance, the number of workers over time would be a metric, once that was implemented and the framework was there for custom benchmarks you could adjust the number of workers and time etc. Although I feel that 50 workers at 10 minutes is pretty arbitrary and rigid. Saturation Speed is a much more flexible and meaningful metric IMO. I assume you disagree, and would love to hear your opinion on the matter.

Basically, if you aren't constantly producing SCVs as Terran, you're screwed.

JaKaTaKSc2

United States2787 Posts

June 11 2013 20:26 GMT

#958

@Anti
I agree, Saturation Speed takes this into account in addition to making sure each SCV is in an efficient place. For example, I can have 50 SCVs at 10 minutes but have over 24 at one base and under 16 at another. The important part of having SCVs is increasing income. Which is why I think Saturation Speed is a more meaningful than just raw SCV count.

Fiziks

United States59 Posts

June 11 2013 21:26 GMT

#959

@JaK: I totally agree that Saturation Speed is a more useful/flexible metric, so I'm not saying SCV count should replace it. I was just using that as an example. Only reason I still personally use SCV count is because it gives me a tangible goal at certain time intervals. Right now my Saturation Speed will always either read Bronze or Masters. So I'm either noob at it or Awesome at it. I still look at SCV count because it tells me how far off I was from the target and not just the result.

@dsjoerg: Thanks for responding! I figured that you guys have a lot of other stuff on your plate, so I wasn't expecting this to be implemented any time soon. I'm totally content and happy with the site as-is, but just seeing the other possibilities coming down the pipe really get me excited for what cool ways I can improve my game.

JaKaTaKSc2

United States2787 Posts

June 12 2013 00:16 GMT

#960

@Fiziks
Cool! Thanks for the feedback. I'll try to make it more apparent how far off a player is from the mark. If you go to the match, you can see how much time it took you and then go to the benchmarks page to see how far off you were, but this is too much work. Going to make it easier for sure

I think user set benchmarks as a whole are awesome though.

@everyone
What do you think would make an awesome metric? What criticisms do you have about the ones we are currently using? This is beta, let's make some improvements :D