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Ok, so perhaps my estimations were too high, thanks to others and this post
Well, we can calculate how much APM are necessary for perfect macro:
Assuming a 2-base terran with marine/tank/medivac/viking (i don't know the exact building counts, so YMMV):
2 Orbital Commands - 2 workers every 17 seconds (requires about 7 APM)
2 Mules every ~90 seconds (requires about 2 APM)
2 Rax with reactors - 4 marines every 25 seconds (requires about 10 APM)
1 Rax with tech lab - 1 marine every 25 seconds (requires about 2.4 APM)
2 Factories with tech lab (2 Tanks every 45 seconds (requires about 2.7 APM)
1 Starport with Reactor 2 Medivacs or Vikings every 42 seconds (requiers about 3 APM)
So for perfect 2-base macro you need around 28 APM. Add about 5-10 for building selection, setting rallypoints, etc. and we have around 35-40 required APM for pure macro on 2 bases.
Additional buildings of course increase the required APM.
Didn't think of calculating it like that :D
And if you were making buildings for supply and production, each of which would take 5 APM (build, select building, place on ground, shift, right click back to minerals), and you make about 1 depot per minute and about 1 building per minute, that's roughly another 10, so about 50 for 2 base.
But still, only if you're perfect :D
Hm, I just realized how useful the timer could be. If you practice quickly calculating and memorize patterns between different producing units (like 3 X unit cycle is almost 2 Y unit cycles), you could see at what times you need to come back to macro.
But I guess it would be much more effective (and give you more APM) if you just cycle through your buildings every now and then xD
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On June 21 2011 12:47 Warp wrote:
The APM differential required to play zerg is extreme, especially at higher levels. I'm a 1.5k masters protoss and I have an average of 200 apm around the 12 minute mark when everything starts picking up (constant poking, upgrades, building pylons, making gas geysers etc.) However, when I offrace as zerg, the creep spreading and the queen injecting off 3-4 bases gives me an apm spike of around 400, while I maintain an average of ~250 (it would be higher if i was more comfortable with the zerg mechanics).
I do believe that protoss has the lowest apm requirement, as if you watch Huk's stream, he used to constantly type song lyrics in pvps while making probes, colossus, and the occasional unit. I heard somewhere that toss takes 60 apm to play a perfect game?
I've played many players with an average apm around 80-100 and lost to them, but personally I believe you need at least a good 120 average apm to play the game at a very precise level. However, until you reach the tops of the master league, the more important thing is macro and knowing how to macro (what unnits to make, when to add buildings and take expos) and you can do that with around 90 apm pretttty well.
APM will naturally increase as you become more familiar with your race, too, so just keep playing!
Really? As a zerg I find zerg macro not particularly APM-intensive for several reasons. (This does NOT include creep spreading, overlord map presence, that pack of speedlings running around outside your base, and all those other things you really want to do as zerg.
Ultimately, macro for all 3 races is honestly very APM-SIMPLE in that even though it may take a lot of actions, the actions are all practiced and swift, even for mediocre players.
The harder part is not the APM you need to spend, but the periodic timing that you need to have in your head to come back in 15 sec and do it again.
Comparing zerg and terran directly, you realize that they're much more similar than they are often made out to be. For zerg, rather than checking on various types of production structures building units that take varying amounts of time, you only need to inject larva every 40 game seconds, and spend them. Spending them is relatively simple, especially since you don't need to go build depots/pylons, you just hit V a couple times while building units. It's also much simpler to handle banking money as a zerg than as other races because your production comes in big bursts.
Larva inject + build units is only marginally more complicated than "select all barracks and jam on A key" - and once you throw in the terran building supply depots and dropping mules here and there, it starts evening out. It does technically require clicking, which building marines does not. But if you use the bitter method or the Idra method, it doesn't take THAT MANY actions.
Actually I would probably say the larva mechanic inflates your APM since it's very easy, very fast series of keypresses (This is what I mean by APM-Simple) - the two methods are like 5shift~click~click~click and 44Vclick55Vclick66vclick. Both of them probably have 1-3 seconds of 300+ APM, but it's very simple apm - I'd say about the same simplicity as pressing 12341234 with no intent, because there's no decision making involved.
Much of the APM requirement IMO with zerg is the amount of mobility and frailty that zerg armies have - you NEED good positioning to win most battles, but your units are also some of the most mobile. Speedling, speed roach, mutalisk, and corruptor are all very fast. Hydras and Broodlords aren't, but they require good positioning and constant attentiveness and support or they get murdered. Ultras and banelings require good positioning. You need to be active with your mobile armies to utilize this mobility. You need to send overlords to appropriate places. You need to spread creep consistently.
And your bigger armies, even "zerg deathballs" with properly supported broodlords are probably the "least 1-A-able" of large armies. Not saying it's complicated, but if you have a pile of broodlords + fast zerg ground units + infestor/corruptor support for broodlords, and you 1A? Even if your enemy was only 1 screen away, your stuff all arrives at different times and doesn't really fight effectively.
(Many types of Terran armies are probably also not very 1-A-able either, in particular marine tank compositions in TVZ... when you 1A marines and tanks rather than proper siege pushing, you get rolled by banelings. Literally. But that isn't my point really. My point is that a big zerg army is not something you can 1A with effectively.)
Macro in SC2 is a lot less apm-intensive than BW - not that that's a bad thing, it just requires less actions to do the macro. (Also, the numbers are artificially lower in SC2 because blizzard doesn't understand what 1 minute is. Our hands are in the real world, not in the game world.)
BW - I want to make 2 zealots and 6 dragoons from my gateways, 2 probes from my nexii
F2, click, Z, click, Z, click, D, click, D, click, D, click, D, click, D, click, D, 0 (nexus), P, click previous probe, rightclick mineral, 9, P, click previous probe, rightclick mineral
25 actions. Time? I could do this in about 5 seconds, and I'm FAR from being a pro. That still bursts me up to 5 actions per second - 300 APM. It's APM-Simple. Even I reach 300 APM during these 5 seconds! And it's all effective & useful APM!
SC2, same thing (with stalkers instead of goons.)
W, (or 5, i don't care) Z, shift, click, click, (release), S, shift, click, click, click, click, click, click, (release) 6, E, E
16 actions (releasing shift doesn't register. I'm not sure pressing shift does either, but I'm counting it.) Even if it's happening at that same 300 APM (it likely is) and taking ~3 seconds it isn't as long of a burst, so the overall actions per minute is always gonna be lower.
Now, my point with this is not that BW is a more difficult/better/whatever game. The difference is purely hand speed. And it's not just hand speed, it's hand speed when you're performing mentally pre-programmed/muscle memory actions. You do this series 100 times per game, every game, in both games. It's actually pretty easy. But it means the BW player (or even a player of both games, while playing BW) will have higher APM while doing the same (technically merely analogous) thing.
This goes between races in SC2 as well. To perform macro maintenence (excluding any "new steps" in a build such as adding new infrastructure or expanding), the terran player selects CCs, builds scvs, drops mules, selects rax, builds marines (and marauders?), selects factories, builds whatever, selects starports, builds whatever. Takes an SCV or two and adds some supply depots.
The protoss player does much the same, though he has to click units down in a pylon field to warp them in. The zerg player injects all his hatcheries, builds some overlords, and builds the pile of units/drones he so desires (there is some decision making here that the other two races don't entirely have in what to build with the larva. That's got nothing to do with APM though.) Every once in a while the zerg builds some dudes without the larva popping off, but 1 larva every 15 sec is not really different from 1 worker every 17 sec or marine every 25.
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On June 21 2011 14:22 Morfildur wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2011 13:56 iokke wrote:Also I too noticed that Z on my level (diamond) have higher apm than P and T, to the point that I see Z with equal apm to mine as lesser players (which is prolly unfair but they usually lose) Real Zerg APM are hard to calculate, especially if they play Ling/Bling-Heavy styles. Usually Lings aren't produced by pressing the key every time, they are produced by pressing and holding, so 50 Lings are produced in 2 seconds (so 750 APM in this 2 seconds alone). The same is true for banelings, which are morphed by pressing and holding. This means there are big spikes in the APM from producing units eventhough the real action is just one keypress. Since terrans and protoss cannot really produce by pressing and holding (except for maybe bronze league), their APM tends to be lower. Since the current playstyle of Zerg tends to be ling/infestor, the APM will be inflated in every game.
if im not mistaken it is now fixed and the opposite is true, meaning zergs make more units with less apm if they hold the button.
it was patched a while back
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if im not mistaken it is now fixed and the opposite is true, meaning zergs make more units with less apm if they hold the button.
it was patched a while back
Thanks for clarifying.
So the apm for Z/P/T is much more equal now, since Z apm was usually just a little higher :D
Good move by Blizzard imo, it's nicer to be able to compare different APMs that are closer at least relatively, and not like you were actually pressing more than 1 button for each unit.
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On June 21 2011 14:33 seupac wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2011 14:22 Morfildur wrote:On June 21 2011 13:56 iokke wrote:Also I too noticed that Z on my level (diamond) have higher apm than P and T, to the point that I see Z with equal apm to mine as lesser players (which is prolly unfair but they usually lose) Real Zerg APM are hard to calculate, especially if they play Ling/Bling-Heavy styles. Usually Lings aren't produced by pressing the key every time, they are produced by pressing and holding, so 50 Lings are produced in 2 seconds (so 750 APM in this 2 seconds alone). The same is true for banelings, which are morphed by pressing and holding. This means there are big spikes in the APM from producing units eventhough the real action is just one keypress. Since terrans and protoss cannot really produce by pressing and holding (except for maybe bronze league), their APM tends to be lower. Since the current playstyle of Zerg tends to be ling/infestor, the APM will be inflated in every game. if im not mistaken it is now fixed and the opposite is true, meaning zergs make more units with less apm if they hold the button. it was patched a while back
I'm not 100% sure, but i think each produced unit still counts as one action, no matter how it was started.
Maybe someone can clarify with a source?
It would explain why sc2gears shows a far higher APM for me than when i watch the replay.
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On June 21 2011 14:35 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +if im not mistaken it is now fixed and the opposite is true, meaning zergs make more units with less apm if they hold the button.
it was patched a while back Thanks for clarifying. So the apm for Z/P/T is much more equal now, since Z apm was usually just a little higher :D Good move by Blizzard imo, it's nicer to be able to compare different APMs that are closer at least relatively, and not like you were actually pressing more than 1 button for each unit.
I still press Z 6 times when I spend 6 larva on lings >_> Habit? More effective for me personally? It's still ultra-simple and takes less than a second. (I guess the repeat delay on my keyboard is too slow to be effective for me, but when I turn it down I start failing miserably at typing because I'll pause momentarily while a key is depressed as thoughts congeal.)
I do let the repeat rate do it for me when it's more than 16 units all of the same type (rare, since I normally do things like RRRRVRRRRV to remember not to supply block myself. I'd need to already have all the supply I need for a while.)
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Haha same, only until recently did I start getting used to holding onto a key 
Before that, lategame, I would spam Z like 50 times... rofl
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On June 21 2011 12:22 closey wrote:
Interesting...but I'd like to object. My average APM is capped around 50-ish even on ladders and I can keep up with my macro until past 30 minutes. I'll do some tests personally, I think we can get lower than 75APM for a 3 base terran! For this to be a meaningful response, you'd have to post your league ranking. If you're 'keeping up with macro' in Gold, no offense, but you're not keeping up with macro.
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On June 21 2011 13:50 Morfildur wrote:
Well, we can calculate how much APM are necessary for perfect macro:
Assuming a 2-base terran with marine/tank/medivac/viking (i don't know the exact building counts, so YMMV):
2 Orbital Commands - 2 workers every 17 seconds (requires about 7 APM)
2 Mules every ~90 seconds (requires about 2 APM)
2 Rax with reactors - 4 marines every 25 seconds (requires about 10 APM)
1 Rax with tech lab - 1 marine every 25 seconds (requires about 2.4 APM)
2 Factories with tech lab (2 Tanks every 45 seconds (requires about 2.7 APM)
1 Starport with Reactor 2 Medivacs or Vikings every 42 seconds (requiers about 3 APM)
So for perfect 2-base macro you need around 28 APM. Add about 5-10 for building selection, setting rallypoints, etc. and we have around 35-40 required APM for pure macro on 2 bases.
Additional buildings of course increase the required APM.
This is totally and completely wrong.
How do you keep track of the timing on each structure's production? Unless you have a little alarm system that chimes differently for each production cycle pre-emptively you will have down time. Just going off the alerts on-screen will give you down time, as they appear as the unit has finished, not before.
Pro players 'tap'; that is to say they bind their production to control groups and then tap back and forth between them so as to keep track of where everything is up to. Tapping can consume between 2-15 APS (actions per SECOND). This is excluding upgrades, and building construction to keep up with supply (each depot needs at least 4 actions), etc, etc.
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I play all three races and my Zerg always results in the most APM as well.
Day9 threw out 80 APM as kind of a bar to go by for required APM to sufficiently do everything up to the diamond level (this was before the advent of Master league). I think this is pretty accurate if you look at Minigun and Sjow.
I feel that many people are misguided when they say they need to improve their APM in order to do more things. That's not really the right way to approach it, and more than often will lead to dick measuring contests. The better way to approach this is being able to think about your next step. You should always have your next step "buffered" in your mind. That way there is no lag when you cycle through your hotkeys or dart your eyes to the different parts of the screens. The other part of it is being able to find windows of time where you're "waiting." If you're moving your army across the map, you have a "window" where you can macro or do something else, while you wait.
It's difficult at first, but slowly your mind and fingers will sync up in execution.
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This is totally and completely wrong.
How do you keep track of the timing on each structure's production? Unless you have a little alarm system that chimes differently for each production cycle pre-emptively you will have down time. Just going off the alerts on-screen will give you down time, as they appear as the unit has finished, not before.
Pro players 'tap'; that is to say they bind their production to control groups and then tap back and forth between them so as to keep track of where everything is up to. Tapping can consume between 2-15 APS (actions per SECOND). This is excluding upgrades, and building construction to keep up with supply (each depot needs at least 4 actions), etc, etc.
We're talking about the minimum, so if you read more carefully you'll see he calculated that considering that you macro perfectly, aka you do have a perfect built in timer in your brain :D
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On June 21 2011 15:46 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +This is totally and completely wrong.
How do you keep track of the timing on each structure's production? Unless you have a little alarm system that chimes differently for each production cycle pre-emptively you will have down time. Just going off the alerts on-screen will give you down time, as they appear as the unit has finished, not before.
Pro players 'tap'; that is to say they bind their production to control groups and then tap back and forth between them so as to keep track of where everything is up to. Tapping can consume between 2-15 APS (actions per SECOND). This is excluding upgrades, and building construction to keep up with supply (each depot needs at least 4 actions), etc, etc. We're talking about the minimum, so if you read more carefully you'll see he calculated that considering that you macro perfectly, aka you do have a perfect built in timer in your brain :D That doesn't make any sense. That's...not the minimum for a human. I don't know how else to say it. If players that train 12 hours a day for years can't do that, what possible use is that information?
It's no more useful than if I said you need ~900 apm baseline minimum for 'perfect' macro, because then you could individually micro every worker to the optimal mineral patch at all bases all game long. It's a useless statement.
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On June 21 2011 15:39 DaemonX wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2011 12:22 closey wrote:
Interesting...but I'd like to object. My average APM is capped around 50-ish even on ladders and I can keep up with my macro until past 30 minutes. I'll do some tests personally, I think we can get lower than 75APM for a 3 base terran! For this to be a meaningful response, you'd have to post your league ranking. If you're 'keeping up with macro' in Gold, no offense, but you're not keeping up with macro.
I'm sorry, but you're wrong about league being required for it to be a meaningful response.
Maybe he's in gold because he sucks at holding off cheese, losing most of his losses <10 minutes to all sorts of all-ins, but winning most of his wins >15 min in a macro game? Or easily crumbles under pressure from an enemy army (sharking, poking, etc) He could still have good macro, but lack other fundamentals keeping him from rising in the ranks. It's just that macro is the MOST LIKELY culprit for what is keeping a player from rising in the ranks.
Also remember 50 SC2 APM is actually 70 APM.
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On June 21 2011 15:50 DaemonX wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2011 15:46 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:This is totally and completely wrong.
How do you keep track of the timing on each structure's production? Unless you have a little alarm system that chimes differently for each production cycle pre-emptively you will have down time. Just going off the alerts on-screen will give you down time, as they appear as the unit has finished, not before.
Pro players 'tap'; that is to say they bind their production to control groups and then tap back and forth between them so as to keep track of where everything is up to. Tapping can consume between 2-15 APS (actions per SECOND). This is excluding upgrades, and building construction to keep up with supply (each depot needs at least 4 actions), etc, etc. We're talking about the minimum, so if you read more carefully you'll see he calculated that considering that you macro perfectly, aka you do have a perfect built in timer in your brain :D That doesn't make any sense. That's...not the minimum for a human. I don't know how else to say it. If players that train 12 hours a day for years can't do that, what possible use is that information? It's no more useful than if I said you need ~900 apm baseline minimum for 'perfect' macro, because then you could individually micro every worker to the optimal mineral patch at all bases all game long. It's a useless statement.
It's a baseline. You can always go higher but you can never go lower.
You cannot have perfect macro with less APM, no matter how you time it. Even an AI with perfect timings would need that amount of APM to macro.
Of course you need more APM for tapping and whatever else you want to do for macro, so the neccessary APM for macro is definatly higher.
And yes, it is meaningless for a real game, it's just an example to show that APM _are_ relevant, you cannot play on 3 mining bases with 50 APM while still controlling your army as all your 50 APM will be required for macro. The further your APM are above the baseline, the better you probably play. If you are below... well, then you most definatly are doing something wrong.
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day9 says to play starcraft 2 you need what, a minimum of 80 apm to be effective?
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Perfect macro would probably require 100 if you are not hotkeying and controling units at all.
200+ otherwise.
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On June 21 2011 12:31 Mojar wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2011 12:22 closey wrote:
Interesting...but I'd like to object. My average APM is capped around 50-ish even on ladders and I can keep up with my macro until past 30 minutes. I'll do some tests personally, I think we can get lower than 75APM for a 3 base terran! If your apm is around 50 on ladder games then your not keeping up with your macro at all sorry  my apm is around 130-140 avg and i still struggle to keep my macro going when their is a lot of battles occurring.
Then you're probably doing a lot of useless clicking. To macro efficiently you generally only need something like: 4 + (bases * 4) actions every ~17-30 seconds. That is assuming 4 different production facilities (including nexus/cc) and 4 production facilities per base, but that is still no where near 140 apm required to macro.
+ Show Spoiler +
Explanation:
A + (B * C)
A is the number of hotkeys you'd have for production facilities, we're assuming 4, one for each type.
B is the number of bases you have
C is the number of production facilities you have per base (which is usually 4, including nexus/cc)
Off of three bases you'd have 12 total production facilities. (Ex: 3 ccs, 1 factory, 1 starport, 7 rax)
Reactored barracks count as two production facilities.
So the number of clicks to macro would be:
1. Select CC
2. Make SCV
3. Make SCV
4. Make SCV
5. Select Rax
6. Make marauder
7. Make marauder
8. Make marauder
9. Make marauder
10. Make marauder
11. Make marauder
12. Make marauder
13. Select Factory
14. Make Tank
15. Select Starport
16. Make medivac
We'll use 17 for the build time because that is what SCVs are. This will inflate the APM requirement a bit, but it will show that you really don't need that much.
APM = Actions / Minutes
APM = 16 / (17/60)
APM ~= 56
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On June 21 2011 15:43 Battousai13 wrote:
Day9 threw out 80 APM as kind of a bar to go by for required APM to sufficiently do everything up to the diamond level (this was before the advent of Master league). I think this is pretty accurate if you look at Minigun and Sjow.
People just "throw numbers" out or their head in these matters. I throw one number myself: Zeerax (i think that was his nick) won against well known players with 50 apm not so long ago in a tournament.
I remember it because the caster and the co-caster were talking about it.
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On June 21 2011 17:35 Okiesmokie wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2011 12:31 Mojar wrote:On June 21 2011 12:22 closey wrote:
Interesting...but I'd like to object. My average APM is capped around 50-ish even on ladders and I can keep up with my macro until past 30 minutes. I'll do some tests personally, I think we can get lower than 75APM for a 3 base terran! If your apm is around 50 on ladder games then your not keeping up with your macro at all sorry my apm is around 130-140 avg and i still struggle to keep my macro going when their is a lot of battles occurring. Then you're probably doing a lot of useless clicking. To macro efficiently you generally only need something like: 4 + (bases * 4) actions every ~17-30 seconds. That is assuming 4 different production facilities (including nexus/cc) and 4 production facilities per base, but that is still no where near 140 apm required to macro. + Show Spoiler +
Explanation:
A + (B * C)
A is the number of hotkeys you'd have for production facilities, we're assuming 4, one for each type.
B is the number of bases you have
C is the number of production facilities you have per base (which is usually 4, including nexus/cc)
Off of three bases you'd have 12 total production facilities. (Ex: 3 ccs, 1 factory, 1 starport, 7 rax)
Reactored barracks count as two production facilities.
So the number of clicks to macro would be:
1. Select CC
2. Make SCV
3. Make SCV
4. Make SCV
5. Select Rax
6. Make marauder
7. Make marauder
8. Make marauder
9. Make marauder
10. Make marauder
11. Make marauder
12. Make marauder
13. Select Factory
14. Make Tank
15. Select Starport
16. Make medivac
We'll use 17 for the build time because that is what SCVs are. This will inflate the APM requirement a bit, but it will show that you really don't need that much.
APM = Actions / Minutes
APM = 16 / (17/60)
APM ~= 56
Indeed. However, when you enter one of those "macro cycles" even a gold level player with 50 apm is going to be doing this in much less time than 17 seconds. But then he'll probably be looking around and not doing things much more often, and possibly miss the start of the next macro cycle.
In macro, the hard part is not the APM requirement, but the periodic requirement that makes it challenging. One way many pros and players handle this is a very high APM way of constantly tapping back to their production facilities to see if they're ready, but you could theoretically do it just with a mental timer (I imagine the famously low-APM players do it this way instead. Thus, their APM seems lower just because theyre approaching their macro without spamming actions.)
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On June 21 2011 15:54 sylverfyre wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2011 15:39 DaemonX wrote:On June 21 2011 12:22 closey wrote:
Interesting...but I'd like to object. My average APM is capped around 50-ish even on ladders and I can keep up with my macro until past 30 minutes. I'll do some tests personally, I think we can get lower than 75APM for a 3 base terran! For this to be a meaningful response, you'd have to post your league ranking. If you're 'keeping up with macro' in Gold, no offense, but you're not keeping up with macro. I'm sorry, but you're wrong about league being required for it to be a meaningful response. Maybe he's in gold because he sucks at holding off cheese, ... He could still have good macro, but lack other fundamentals keeping him from rising in the ranks. Sorry, but...no. Just...no.
If you actually think this, then you're just rationalising your own ranking. If you're not in masters, your macro needs work. If you're not in diamond, it's fucking appalling. This is just how it is. You don't macro well and stay in Gold. It's been proven countless times. It's even been shown you can get to diamond on pure macro using idiotic compositions like Queen only (Destiny did this).
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EPT
