One thing I never understood is the emphasis people place on actions per minute early on. In the first minute as a Terran, you can make an SCV, build a supply depot, and send out a scout. A pro could have 200 APM here, which I'm guessing is mostly from clicking over and over. To warm up the hands or relieve nerves? I dunno.
A commentator may point out how fast he is at this point, but how is this early APM a judge of skill? Sure, after a few minutes you need to macro and control a battle, and this is when it becomes important. Though when I send an SCV to a location to build my first depot, I only need to click there once. He WILL get there, and clicking 20 times doesn't do anything. I see it as a waste of energy.
I'm only in gold, but should I spend the first minute of my game rampantly clicking? If a replay shows a 300 APM count before my barracks, will my opponent freak out and post about my skill on forums?
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty
Game » consists of 10 releases. Released Jul 27, 2010
The first chapter in the StarCraft II trilogy focuses on the struggles of the Terran race, as seen through the eyes of Commander Jim Raynor, leader of the rebel group Raynor's Raiders.
Early APM?
Early APM sucks for me because I have the same logic as you; why would I need to have such a high APM when I can basically just build some workers and a supply? Still I have to occasionally spam the worker button to keep my APM up.
For the most part though its warming up. Because if you don't do the warm up and you need to pull off some crazy APM for microing and macroing at the time you need it, it helps a fuck lot.
Also most non-pro but good players hover around 100-150 apm. Pros go at 200-250 apm or even 300. People might assume you're either ungodly, hacking a pro (of course you still need to play as a pro first).
APM means almost nothing. Most of the diamonds I play on the ladder are around ~80 (I am as well) and you don't really need that much more average until you actually get into battles which obviously require many more actions (especially if you try and maintain macro).
As for the beginning, I really don't see any need to spam (usually players switch off between a hotkey'ed worker and main) as I doubt it really helps all that much to warm up as most pro players use hand warmers to keep warm before games. Most pros are a bit under 200 (150-200) although some of the Koreans get up there, but it's not really all that neccesary.
I answer your question with another question:
Which is easier? Driving 100 km/h when you're already doing 100 km/h, or driving 100km/hour when you start at 25km/h.
For diamond and lower, sure, apm doesnt really have any effect on the game. But at the highest levels of competition, it makes a world of difference. Try reaper rushing if you have low APM and see if you can effectively harrass and build your base perfectly to your build order. You can't. Basically, unless the game lasts less than 5 minutes, the early game spam has nearly no effect on your games average APM.
I figured it's more of a warm up thing. I'm around 50 average early, mainly because I don't do much at the start of the game aside from think. I do nonsense like drink some water between SCV's coming out. But later on things pick up. Maybe it's because I play guitar between games, but my hands usually feel pretty warmed up.
My APM at work is probably around 1000, wish that would translate over to here, lol.
Haven't played Brood War in a while, but I hear that pro averages back then were around 500 because of how mechanical you needed to be (limits like 12 units in a control group, for example). Which is insane. There's gotta be some hand view videos out there.
" I answer your question with another question: Which is easier? Driving 100 km/h when you're already doing 100 km/h, or driving 100km/hour when you start at 25km/h. For diamond and lower, sure, apm doesnt really have any effect on the game. But at the highest levels of competition, it makes a world of difference. Try reaper rushing if you have low APM and see if you can effectively harrass and build your base perfectly to your build order. You can't. Basically, unless the game lasts less than 5 minutes, the early game spam has nearly no effect on your games average APM. "Oh yeah, by that point it's obviously gonna spike up. I'm just talking about early, early on when you're building your third SCV or something along those lines.
That last bit was sort of mentioned in my post. I was talking mostly about average APM when I said that APM doesn't really matter. I can't remember who said it, but I remember reading or hearing about a pro (GSL interviews, SotG or something) who said that he was more impressed with players who managed to play well with low APM than people with 200+ APM. A lot of it is spam like multiple move commands when a single click would suffice. That's not to say that APM spikes aren't actual work (Reaper harass + Macro is a good example)." I answer your question with another question: Which is easier? Driving 100 km/h when you're already doing 100 km/h, or driving 100km/hour when you start at 25km/h. For diamond and lower, sure, apm doesnt really have any effect on the game. But at the highest levels of competition, it makes a world of difference. Try reaper rushing if you have low APM and see if you can effectively harrass and build your base perfectly to your build order. You can't. Basically, unless the game lasts less than 5 minutes, the early game spam has nearly no effect on your games average APM. "
Bottom Line: If you need to spam in the beginning to warm-up, do it. If you don't then don't. It doesn't say anything about your skill level if you have 10,000 APM at the start of the game.
Just gonna reiterate what everyone else is saying. You never know when you're going to need 150+ APM because you never know what your opponent's going to do. It's very easy to fold crucial actions into 150 APM of spam. It's very hard to accelerate at the drop of a hat if you're sitting around 60 APM and suddenly need those extra actions.
I'd rather be relaxed at the start of a game. Spaming makes me feel more pressured and I make worse decisions under pressure. It's all down to preferance though. Just because someone better than me does something to get focused doesn't mean it's going to work for me.
Anyway macro > micro. I just a move most of the time as zerg so I can concentrate on other somethings.
ReTarDedFisHy agrees with what everyone else is saying. He warms up his fingers and gets reacquainted with his hotkeys.
ReTarDedFisHy doesn't think Terran has much to do early game. As a zerg player he clicks his hatch, selects larva, spawns a drone, boxes his workers clicks a mineral patch, boxes half of those workers and clicks another patch, sets hits hatch at 1, sets his worker rally to the nearest mineral patch, sets the unit rally to near the hatch towards the ramp, selects his overlord to scout for the enemy base, sets the overlord to 4, double taps 1 to select the hatch and spawn another drone and send him to the nearest empty patch.
The spamming (sdsdsdsdsdsdsdsdsd) comes from making sure no time is wasted. If you ever have minerals that you shouldn't have you're just being inefficient. That being said once ReTarDedFisHy gets out of the build order phase his APM goes from 250 to 100.
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