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Recently I thought I'd try to make a conscious effort to cut down on redundancy in my actions. My goal was to have under 10% redundancy. I thought it would be easy. I was wrong.
Basically it's really difficult, because every time you check the progress of a units build time, select some units but don't tell them to do anything, or if you click repeatedly in one spot, it counts as redundant.
The detection for redundant actions is evidently slightly flawed, but it's still an interesting excercise to attempt to get under 10% redundancy, even if you're just playing against a computer. The idea is that by cutting down your redundant actions, you'll have more time to think about strategy, to defend your base while macroing, and make fewer micro mistakes like double stimming, or telling your units to keep moving when they're actually within range.
The flaws, if you don't understand already, is that sometimes it's necessary to tell units to move to the same location a million times, simply because they get stuck on things and start going backwards over each other if you don't. There's also the ideal of constantly keeping you units on your finger tips. Checking times to unit completion and health however, is less necessary and should probably be regarded as inability to remember how long it's been, rather than a skilful use of one's APM.
So here's the challenge: Play against a friend, or a computer, whatever you want, and see how many games it takes to actually get below a 10% redundancy.
It took me 4 games, and on my fourth game I decided to play Terran instead of Protoss (which I did my first 3 games), finishing the game with 89 APM, 82 eAPM, a 8% redundancy with solid macro simple micro. Interestingly, though 80 apm used to make me sweat years ago, and feel excessively fast, it actually felt so slow today. If I weren't playing the retardo computer it might have given me extra time to think and strategise (something I used to do constantly in my 60 APM days...).
Maybe people could try having 1v1s where you get disqualified if you go over 10% redundancy 
EDIT: In the interests of science, we can compare what redundant actions are hardest to suppress...
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its ez with structured games like PvT with no action. But when something starts happening I just can't help my spamming style, I cant :D
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Interesting exercise, but cycling through units (selection without actions) and (as you already pointed out) issuing redundant move commands is certainly useful to do. I guess what I am saying is lowering the redundancy seems like a fun side thing to do, but not an effective way to improve your skill.
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What's the point? Playing without redundancy doesn't make you better and it would be annoying to do.
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that effective apm and redundancy is worse than the apm craze. its 100% necessary to go through your buildings to check your units/upgrade's progress time and to issue move commands repeatedly in certain situations.
instead of cutting down on some actions to make time for others, you need to instead get faster so that you have time to do all of those things.
i mean, redundancy would mean something if all you do is 123412341234, but instead of using some stupid arbitrary measurement that someone came up with to decide if your actions are useful, use your head. 12341234 redundancy is not useful, tapping 5 every once in a while to check the progress of your production cycle in your gateway or something is.
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Well the idea is that you see more clearly which actions you do that are just retarded, and which ones you do that are useful. Playing with low redundancy WILL make you better. I normally play with about 20-30% redundancy, and whenever I play against someone with 40% or higher redundancy, I usually end up destroying them. I can attribute this, and some of my own losses, to being too busy doing things that are meaningless when the game is picking up and I should be doing things that will defend from enemy harass and doing my own harass. If I'm being a dummy and checking the progress on your marines production, you're not watching the battle, which means you're hurting your game.
It's just supposed to be a neat little thing to see where the majority of your spam comes from, because you really have to resist during the excersise.
I would say don't knock it before you try it, but no one will
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if youre checking your marine production during the middle of a micro intensive battle, then yes youre being a dummy like you said. but otherwise unless your sense of timing is perfect its crucial to check the progress of your units/upgrades. just because youre checking their progress doesnt mean you have to do it during a time where you need to micro your units or defend from harass or something.
you beating some people with a little bit more redundancy is hardly scientific proof or anything. check the redundancy of pros, im sure its a lot higher.
its a good idea to see which actions are necessary, but i dont think its a good idea to do that using some arbitrary program. just use your head, whenever you make an action, ask yourself if it was useful.
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Kentor
United States5784 Posts
Okay so playng with 40% redundancy is retarded. Playing with 10% is not helpful at all.
So then change the aim to 20-30~% redundancy, which is also what pros usually have.
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On September 01 2008 06:09 LemOn wrote:
its ez with structured games like PvT with no action. But when something starts happening I just can't help my spamming style, I cant :D
pvt = no action? who the hell have you been playing
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Must be playing D-C- rank on iccup where pvt is one sided rape
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A lot of these actions are not 'redundant', when I cycle through all my troops with my hotkeys, its not just for fun, to keep hand speed up, or anything. A lot of the time I'm remembering where my troops are, there exact make up, etc etc. Cyciling through troops is like examining your army before battle, entirely needed, not redundant at all.
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Dude, if you wanna eliminate redundancy in reports, just play zerg. Pressing 4sddd (as I often do to ensure my command to make drones actually registered) does not count as multiple build commands in BWchart, as pressing ssss for an SCV does. Null actions are extremely rare for zergs... and you know you wanna be one! Cuz we're sexy.
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A Zerg should actually have higher redundancy, because he should be constantly checking between his hatcheries to see if there's any larvae yet, and building them as soon as they pop out, not when you let 2 idle into 3. It would be ideal if a Zerg player could get the timing in their head that they could just go to their hatchery every 20 seconds without redundantly checking it 50 times when they could be moving units elsewhere.
I'm not saying in real games you should try to get under 10% redundancy... It's just a fun little challenge that might reveal some truths about your game play. Jeez.
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eAPM is more of a novelty than a useful tool. You pretty much know in game how much "spam" you're doing anyway, and that's what I go on.
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On September 01 2008 07:19 PsycHOTemplar wrote:
A Zerg should actually have higher redundancy, because he should be constantly checking between his hatcheries to see if there's any larvae yet, and building them as soon as they pop out, not when you let 2 idle into 3. It would be ideal if a Zerg player could get the timing in their head that they could just go to their hatchery every 20 seconds without redundantly checking it 50 times when they could be moving units elsewhere.
I'm not saying in real games you should try to get under 10% redundancy... It's just a fun little challenge that might reveal some truths about your game play. Jeez.
yeah, I'm prolly just not concentrating on the right things. unless I 5-9pool I tend to have 2 larva saved up before my next macro cycle (after early game, that is).
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On September 01 2008 06:57 statix wrote:Show nested quote +On September 01 2008 06:09 LemOn wrote:
its ez with structured games like PvT with no action. But when something starts happening I just can't help my spamming style, I cant :D pvt = no action? who the hell have you been playing
You can play PvT without drops, with two to three fights whole game, play it ubersafe etc. Like those time on Luna when Terrans took 2 expos, 200/200'd and attacked. And since you play it safe you don't have to care about harrashment too much.
pvt = no action is a bull, but you certainly can have games that are virtually without it -,-
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And btw eapm gives you some tolerance of checking health of your units and production cycle 
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I see your point. And I gotta agree.
Keeping checks on your units with hotkeys is pretty important, but if you think about it
if you can cut down on spamming to get apm, you'll prolly be thinking more about what to do next
or have more time to do sucessful harass/raids, scouting etc.
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why can't you think while spamming? spamming is mindless.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/4141/redunge3.png)
