I just watched a guide on RTS Professional and the guy's APM (Actions Per Minute) must be phenomenal. How the heck does he find so much to do? Last time I played on Battle.net I was asked if I was n00b, which, I guess I am, but how am I supposed to find so much to do? From the looks of it, he was just manipulating drones and Overlords incredibly quickly and repetitively but...how? What should I look for to improve in this aspect?
If you think that's crazy, watch some of Boxer's games. He does things in Starcraft even the developers didn't imagine. Other than that all you can do is practice.
High APM doesn't exactly make you a better player. It simply shows the player has fast hands. People tend to issue unit orders several times which isn't really necessary. If its a high APM constantly then hes spamming right click, if the APM increases during times when micro is critical then hes doing everything right.
Then again a large portion of the game is being fast and having split second reaction times. A lot of APM is simply the player spamming to keep their hands warm. But it does help in the long run and in even matches. Higher APM does tend to signal a better player.
Of course. Like if you had an average of like 30 APM you wouldn't be much of a threat lol. But I was saying high APM doesn't generally make the player, its what he does with the actions. But during those micro intense battles, lots of actions are needed, although you could have a crazy APM but make the wrong descisions. Depends on the individual I guess.
Yeah some "medicore" players just click everywhere, so that it looks they are "pro". But real "pro"-players like Boxer or Nal_ra, had an APM of 360. Ofc. to start out with they just warmed up, but controling 3 dropsships all over the map without loosing more then 3 marines, cant be done with 60 apm Im not really a great player myself, but I can tell you, that APM isnt the most important part at "our" lvl. Its much more important that you learn the way the game plays, and get your macro up (requires a good apm too ). When you then have all the basics skills, can expand, have a constantly unit productions without minerals/gas in the "bank", then you can start to begin to get your APM higher, and begin to micro. Back to your real question: When you are beginning to get expos (expansions) up, you will need to macro much more. You will need to produce SCV´s from 2-5 CC, you will need to produce MM/tanks and vultures from 8 - 12 Barracks and Factories. If it takes 16 sec´s to produce one marine, and you have 8 barracks, then you need at least 30 APM . You will also need to move all those units around, take more expos etc. At that game stage, even without micro, 80-120 APM would/should be your standard. If you then want to micro too (not a bad idea), then you will need a much higher APM (expamle of micro: Dancing with Dragoons, Reaver drops, Getting your marines behind your medics when you fight ultralisks.).
I hate long games, makes me sleep. Thats why I finish mine as fast as possible. Preferably with aggressive Zealot streams and well done micro. I had a problem of focusing way to much on my micro on my initial attack, and where I'd get into your base and do some damage, if the attack didn't win then I'd be fucked cuz I'd focused on the micro instead of making lots of gates and teching. But I've improved my macro now. Hotkeys ftw, I never used them before...
Just remember to use Ctrl+numbers, thats the simplest strategy for jumping around building from everything, then switching it to units, to better manourver your units. .
Last week I saw a match on gamesTV.org, where a guy was instantly beaten with an apm of 400 by an othe guy with an apm of 280-300. It may not be the best example, but sometimes when I check my replays I find out that I (with 120-180 apm) beat guys with 200-300 apm. I don't want to improve anymore, I simply can't be faster, can't find any mosre useful things to do, even when watching Boxers videos
APM is kind of useless, it doesn't make you more, it just makes you more... speedy in mouse clicking.
APM means NOTHING. Some of the best foreign players have max apms of like 160-180. Koreans with 300 apms and crap just spam and do pointless actions. They check up on things and less than a second later they have to check it again. starcraft is a game of knowledge, the only time APM comes in handy is during a battle, but often times battles can be won with very little micro (but not in pvz, if u cant storm for doodoo, its gg)
I didn't want to create a separate thread for my question since it's related to the topic. What is the best way to assign my (group) numbers? Generally I use all my numbers on buildings, 0 and 1 on main buildings while all the rest on my main production buildings. This is a handy way of distributing my numbers because I can keep reinforcing my army (I'm beginning to use rally points more and more) without losing sight of the action around my military units. At decent army sizes I just press ctrl before clicking to issue orders in more precise way. Pro gamers number their production buildings early game until they've mustered a huge army, at which point they switch their numbers. They tend to have one number for a main production building and all the rest on identical units. This makes controlling your army easy but in order to produce units you need to lose sight of your troops, which I'm not comfortable with. Do I just need to get used to the pro numbering and go back and 'manually' produce units? I guess there's a reason pros use their numbers this way but it just seems more comfortable for me to start producing by pressing only two buttons (number, hotkey).
if ill answer base on experience, ill say im gonna number my structures from 0 - 6 and my units from 1 - 5 it really just varries if you'll have a late game or not.. most of the time I want a long game so at late times i dont number structures as i can easily number the screen locations so i just set rally points to my structures once i numbered the screens... anyway im not sure of these but what do you think of SC2 controlling be like?? will you be able to number various structures in one control?? if that can be implemented that will really help a lot as you can tab through your structures like tabbing your units in WC3 style...
Multiple building selection is currently in, but heavily discussed about by the blizz team, as it mostly benefits Protoss, as well as reduce macro for all races.
I'm for MBS, whats so wrong about macroing easier, it just means the micro will be more intense and their will be more incentive for average players to put maybe 9 gateways in one hotkey meaning they only build all Zealots instead of mixing, resulting in them getting pwned when the enemy secretly has Banshees, of course Warp-in would rule that scenario out. But you catch my drift. Same goes for unlimited selection, the average player will select all his units as if it was the 12, whereas the skilled player would formate them accordingly, which would require more APM but results in him not sending his Zerglings blind into some Jackal or something, so that further disginguishes the good from the poor. Also the fact it benifits Protoss is kind of a good thing as it further distinguishes the race as having great macro possibilities which is the point of warp-in.
