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hey, so I have this habit of practising my builds and speed vs the Ai. What I do is I take whatever build I want to improve with and just slam it down as well as I can, until I get it smooth enough that I have an idea of how its timings work, then I repeat the process, but do it while moving a reaper or army/ drop around the map and trying to get as much screen time on the reaper. When I can comfortably do this I take the build to ladder. However, today I figured it would be interesting to get a solid measure on how much time I could actually squeez out of a build in terms of screen time spend on micro.
So what I did was I just took a look at the replay and ran a stop watch whenever the screen was on an offensive unit.
And in a 10 minute to max out game ( Reaper fe --> 6 hellions + banshee --> 3/1/1 +1+1 --> CC --> 7Rax bio tank)
I got to 3:19 total time spend on micro (count starts when the reaper pops, so it's basically 8:00 total game time, 3:19 spend on micro and 4:41 spend on macro.
It dawned on me that this seems rather weak, and now I'm wondering how the ratio looks for stronger players and whether it's a useful metric to keep an eye on at all.
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You have a creative mind for devising training methods. This is very useful for improving at things.
However, I'd advise you to start by finding a way to train yourself to play while staying relaxed and maintaining good posture. Most people don't bother to do this consciously and inevitably suffer from RSIs (repetitive stress injuries) when they take a rigorous approach to SC. Prioritizing relaxation will protect your health and improve your in-game technique, just as it does for musicians.
As for your training idea, it sounds promising. I see two weaknesses: (a) Nobody else will be using the same metric as you, so you won't get many numbers to compare against or get inspired by. (b) It's time consuming to take a stopwatch to your replays, so in a way you're wasting a good deal of your practice time. (Spending time on replays is worthwhile, but that time is probably better spent if you devote it to learning about strategy.) Instead of taking a stopwatch to your replays, you could achieve your goal of minimizing macro time and maximizing micro time by gradually increasing the number of battle groups you can keep in motion. That is, instead of achieving 3:19 today and aiming for 3:30 tomorrow, try microing two groups today and three groups tomorrow, while still leaving no holes in your macro.
Still, the best training method is whichever one you'll stick to. If you carry on with this, it will improve your skills. Go ahead and keep posting your numbers as you ratchet them up. Stay safe and don't hurt your wrists/shoulders.
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Oh you misunderstand, I'm most certainly not practising with a stopwatch on a regular basis. I've been doing this whole run a reaper around to force myself to speed up since WoL, and it definitely helped with accelerating my macro habits, but its really just an exercise to get myself into a groove without any stress. I am curious however where other players from different skill levels would land doing this exercise. My gut feeling is that the super quick terran pros (the comparison doesn't really work across races, I think?) don't spend more than a third of their screen time on base management compared to my 60% giving them something like an extra 2 minutes of micro screen time compared to myself.
Thank you for your concern, I'm fortunately not plagued with any wrist issues or alike ♥
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![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/ycebC4D.png)
edit: swapped the X and Y axis here. Whoops.
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From the 1st person videos I have seen, the pros spend way less than a 3rd of their screen time macroing after the earlygame. They switch the screen back, set down buildings or swap ad-ons and go back to battle about a second, and obviously have all production on hotkeys. They might start upgrades build ad-ons with hotkeys as well. It would be cool to have the real numbers, though!
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On May 26 2021 17:39 Slydie wrote:
From the 1st person videos I have seen, the pros spend way less than a 3rd of their screen time macroing after the earlygame. They switch the screen back, set down buildings or swap ad-ons and go back to battle about a second, and obviously have all production on hotkeys. They might start upgrades build ad-ons with hotkeys as well. It would be cool to have the real numbers, though!
i agree man. i think ill get on that now.... brb
https://lotv.spawningtool.com/66169/ replay
Ok, i checked out this clem replay from one of my earlier posts and turns out its not conclusive. For one, clem spends a lot of his extra time on making efficient use of his mules ( pulling them off and dropping them on time) and only really microes his early game units when scouting for proxies or when he is engaged. On top of that he positioned them to catch potential attacks, but in this early game nothing happened so instead of trying to maximize his micro time on the reaper hellion cyclone he opts to just get his Bo down perfectly. However come minute 6 ish? his 111 and 3rd are basically done and all he has to do in his base is slam down some more depots from time to time and add more rax which he equips with reactors via hotkeys. From this point onward his screen focuses on his main army that is protecting his third and scouting the attack paths leading to his third.
i did get some numbers ( 3:45) spend on his units from 2:00 to 10:00 but this should be taken with a grain of salt as I this measurement was done by hand with a stop watch and clem sometimes switches to his army for only a split second, but with very high frequency. Like he doesn't continuously look at anything, the screen is always flicking around (very very rarely is he scrolling). From what I can tell i would assume that he can pull of his Bo while being pressured or attacking with maybe a third of his available screen time. If I were to compare that to what I can do he is about twice as fast with everything he does. For example slamming down 2 rax and sending the scvs back to mining takes him less than a second while it takes me roughly two.
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This is really interesting to look at. However, I think there are a lot of factors involved here.
#1 is APM. If you can do everything you need to do for macro faster, you'll probably have a little more time to check on your units and get some value out of them without sacrificing any economy. EPM is probably a better measure of this than APM.
#2 is what you're doing with units. You make a good point about the game you watched with Clem where he's just kind of moving units into certain positions and then focusing on macro. I think the amount of time you spend microing is more of a measure of how much time you NEED to do everything you WANT with your units. For example, positioning marines in an area to stop a scouting reaper, positioning a cyclone to stop air, loading units into a bunker, taking a watchtower or sending a scout out. Obviously if the enemy engages you, you're forced to micro, but what's really the point of mindlessly microing a reaper around the map? I think it's great practice for getting faster and switching screens, but in a real game you'll be spending time more efficiently, only using the reaper to maybe kill of a creep tumor, scout a base, scout attack paths and probably able to jump between the reaper and macroing fairly easily. You won't even need to be looking at it that much, although it's good practice like I said.
#3 is what's actually happening in the game. If you're 3 base, 8 raxing a zerg player, by the time you get your production up, you're gonna be spending a hell of a lot of time microing and almost no on-screen time for macro, just selecting your production and building and rallying them to the fight. If you open with a build that's very defensive with little pressure, you're probably barely going to be microing except to position units.
I guess the tl;dr here is I don't think time spent macroing vs microing matters as much as being able to switch screens fast and do both at the same time
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High effective APM is a sign you know what to do.
Knowing what to do comes with experience. For macro that means hammering out a refined build order. Micro is easier to learn and know what to do. You don't want to be thinking about what do in a game of Starcraft. If you start thinking in a high level game, the game is already over. You can think about the game after the match while you watch the replay.
You're not better than what you've practiced. So play your game, and analyze it after and practice hammering out refined build orders versus the AI.
So to win, you have to know what to do. When you know what to do, you do it, and that gives you high effective APM.
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EPT
