My Thoughts on Competitive Gaming

[raymondchougaming]

Some Fun Exercises

-Watch an FPVOD of someone really fast and really good at multitasking (like Bisu), and /only/ watch the minimap -Same as above, but /only/ watch the bottom box

I think this trains the brain to be like “damn look at all of this information I gain when I look at these areas”

Also, Bisu’s sequencing is really interesting. During micro, he controls when it’s more worth it, and will actually let his minerals float if it means doing a /lot/ of damage. This is almost always worth it in Brood War! Also, he finds the best windows to tap and macro in the middle...

A lot of Bisu’s play is like “okay, how much can I get done with how few buttons” which is really cool to watch

[raymondchougaming]

Redesigning Everything

I think I need a break from how intense everything is - going to get back into Starcraft.

This is going to begin with a mental algorithm - that I’m going to constantly be thinking about. 

Eye-triangle: Minimap (eyes here mainly) - Selection (tap) - Money (and then other stuff)

I like this idea - this forces me to look at everything that I’m supposed to be looking at. Let’s try to keep things simple. 

Macro: SCVs, Supply Depots, SPEND MONEY.  Progress: Tech/Expand/Defenses/other stuff I might need Counters Army movements

Priorities:

1. What they’re doing to me, if I’m being attacked 2. MICRO stuff, spend as little time as possible on this 3. Try to squeeze macro motions in between attack moves and stuff, try not to move your screen over, except for like supply depots and stuff

Hotkey setup: Well, I’m going to be clicking on the minimap mainly to move between stuff, so no point trying to hotkey literally everything.

ALWAYS:

-w for CC’s and upgrades -e for macro -r for harass/main thing I’m working on -q for current tech path -caps for depot SCVs

EARLY GAME:

2 - Barracks 3 - Factory 4 - Starport (this allows for better rallying and better tapping) 5,6 - Units around the base in case I need to get them moving there immediately

Tap order: weweqweweq and then 234 in there if we have it. So like qwer and then 234r. weweqwewe is always good.

This is good for lifts and exchanging

MID GAME: 

23456 - Army (probably not going to use more than like 234 at most), everything else the same

2 is main army 3 is probably flying bois like liberators 4 is for main spellcasters

Plan this out with specific armies

BIG CHANGES: Put attack key on spacebar (and a as secondary because muscle memory) Putting tab back on...well...tab

STOP SPAMMING

Button combinations to get really good at:

ALWAYS: qweqweqwe just to check everything or just wewewe

EARLY GAME

Reaper micro: r (select reaper), qwer (tap), 234r (tap buildings), wfr or wdfr (build 2 SCVs)

Harass: r, qwer,

Squeezing things in:

Every time you attack, make a unit

After right clicks, make a unit

[raymondchougaming]

Why I Was Never Good

Okay, here we go, ya boi going to brutally lay into himself here. I will now list a few things that held me back from ever becoming good, and why.

If anyone that isn’t me is reading this, please don’t be like “I told you so.” If I truly understood what you were saying, I would’ve changed. But only recently did I understand why I didn’t understand what people were saying.

1. I Prioritized All of the Wrong Shit. Always. Literally, Always.

I had an incredible amount of mechanical skill...which sometimes even alarms me. I would micro relatively well against just about anything. There’s just a few problems. Either:

My screen wasn’t there

I was doing it aimlessly, so I was missing about half of the things I needed

I was doing something else in the name of “macro”

I got in my own way with whatever “setup” I had

Let’s face it. No amount of APM will enable you to make five workers as those hellions run into your base. You have to DROP WHAT YOU’RE DOING, save your workers, and THEN go back to doing what it was you were doing. Even pros miss workers to save the rest of their workers. I’d say that’s worth. Even pros miss production cycles, workers, depots, whatever to keep their armies alive. This is the main reason why I was never good.

People tried to tell me, but I just didn’t really understand them. The mechanism I relied on to get my game going was so significantly different from everyone else’s that that concept didn’t quite comprehend.

I don’t do very well when I am interrupted if I don’t have a plan for it.

In other words, I was playing a single player game.

2. I Played Without Strategy

What do you mean by this? Didn’t you do builds? You thought about unit compositions, about timings, about literally everything...even really, really deep things about the game.

Well, what I was doing was the equivalent to having the exterior of a Lamborghini, with heated seats, the nicest leather you could get, a custom-designed steering wheel, my own unique paint job...

...but the engine of the shittiest car ever (any Pontiac?)

I had the right builds, the right ideas, I would get really, really deep things correct. This would be the equivalent to knowing opening theory, really deeply, learning how to maneuver pieces, pawn structures, really deep ideas like calculating all the way into the endgame...only to hang a knight and have the position collapse. It’s literally the same thing.

I played without basic ass strategy. There were so many things that I didn’t think about, like how should I engage this army? What does that mean? What shape should my units be making? Questions like what buttons am I going to press to make my units do what I want? How should my units interact with theirs? Why? How do I make it better? How do I rig my setup to facilitate this?

What terrain should I engage on? I started thinking about this more...but it still wasn’t enough.

In some sense, I was disconnected and did a lot of things on autopilot. Which brings me to my next point:

3. I Was Disconnected With my Units/Buildings

 This one is really hard to explain. I tried to get awareness, but because I relied so heavily on hotkeys, and not enough minimap clicking to get around, it would seem like I would lose track of where I put things, if that makes sense. This one is really difficult to explain. But I always felt some sort of disconnect.

Honestly, hotkeys are good and all, but nothing is substitute for minimap clicking, because it not only has the advantage of not being too taxing on the brain (getting yourself to use a lot of hotkeys is difficult), but also because it forces your eyes to travel in that direction.

4. I Was Always Trying to do Something Different

How much actual meta did I play before I tried to do something different? I clearly was missing a level of the game, yet I always tried to do something that wasn’t standard.

5. There’s Not Enough Flexibility in My Engine

If I’m doing a set build where there’s set micro timings and set everything, I slay it. Or we get into a late game situation, where I have a good system set up, I know what I should be doing, and how I can do it. But if crazy shit happens...we’re fucked. Maybe it’s okay to be a little inefficient if it’s strategically the correct play...which brings me to my final point.

6. I Spam too Much

This was really, really difficult to admit. But I do spam. A lot. It got a lot better in the 2017 iteration of my StarCraft playing, but for some reason I still can’t micro on two fronts at once. I still can’t control my reaper perfectly while making everything at home.

If I really did have 300 apm, that should be easy. But it’s not. Why?

I guess it’s time to reevaluate my engine and make something that actually works.

I was able to beat players by sheer muscle. But now it’s time to use my brains.

This was VERY VERY VERY difficult to admit. 

But I hope that means we can finally move forward.

[raymondchougaming]

Brood War Hotkey Setup

90% of your actions can be best done by just having super good mouse accuracy and speed...unfortunately. But for the most part, hotkeys will help. This post will be for Terran only.

Screenkeys

EARLY GAME

F2 - Main CC F3 - Natural CC F4 - Rally point

MID-LATE GAME, AFTER A LOT OF PRODUCTION STRUCTURES

F2 - Production F3 - Rally Point (Or secondary production, if Protoss) F4 - Main CC (Or if we have a secondary production screenkey, this one will be the rally)

Methods for rallying: We can either do the constant screenkey switch like I’ve been doing (F2 click F3 right click, etc), or we can do the click Ctrl+7 click Ctrl+ 8 Click Ctrl+9 click Ctrl+0, go to rally, and then right click all of them...it’ll depend. So far, I’m leaning to constant screenkey switching.

Our hotkey setup should be based on our mental checklist, so the closer that they are aligned, the better. I personally dislike hitting 1a2a - it’s awkward for me, so I just start on 3, and have 1 and 2 be scans or something. So I’m only going 3a.4a.5a.6a.7a.8a.9a.0a. (where the .’s are left clicks)

The Mental Checklist

-Look at your minimap! -Workers -Depots -Spend your money! ===Upgrades? ===Tech, how’s your tech doing?

That’s about really...

So since Terran only really 2-bases (lol jk), here’s how I’m going to hotkey things:

EARLY GAME:

1,2 - Command Centers (2 is Barracks until I get second CC, then I’ll move Barracks to 5) 0-? Production (usually you’ll only have like 4 production structures, so I’ll keep them on 7890) 3-? Dudes

LATE GAME:

1,2,3 - Scans (or 1,2 scans, 3 for harass) 4-0 Army (Unless it’s TvP when we can have fewer control groups on army...then I’ll leave a few factories onboard)

Combinations to Practice:

n, shift+box, Ctrl+n 3a4a5a6a7a8a9a0a 7m8m9m0m 7v8v9v0v (or whatever unit I want out of there, such as 7c8c9m0m for two medics and two marines)

That’s about it really.

[raymondchougaming]

BROOD WAR! [Logistics]

So, now that Scotty and Jeff are both playing Brood War again, perhaps I should somewhat get into it too. It shouldn’t take much - I already have a lot of experience, but let’s just get a few things straight.

Hesitation is caused by not knowing what to do - so if we just know what to do, we should be good. 

Execution speed is just practice and economy of motion - this has been discussed very much. I will elaborate on this later.

Awareness is the name of game - we will be much more effective if we are aware of everything that is going on. This will be solved by 3 methods: eye positioning, tapping, and having checklists.

In terms of strategy...well, we’ll get into that later haha. Let’s just make sure that we can actually play the game first.

I’m going to work on some hotkey setups and other logistics later...but for now, I’m going to go do something else.

[raymondchougaming]

TvZ Combat-Stim Push (Try to get 5:00)

So here’s a permutation I’m playing around with:

-Reaper expand -Barracks with the money that piles up -Tech lab upon completion of reaper -Depot immediately after lab -Barracks when you can afford it -Barracks with the SCV that makes Barracks #2, get lab on Rax #2 -Instant stim/combat shield -Second gas after Barracks #4 -Factory when you can afford it -Into reactor Starport -40 Depot -Get an ebay when you can afford it

5:37 34 marines, 2 medivacs

16 Marine drop: 4:35 16 marines, 2 medivacs, stim almost done (at 5:00)

[raymondchougaming]

Making Workers

So I streamed a few games today (check twitch, 4/7), and I made it my point to prioritize making workers and upgrades. So of course, my macro slipped a bit...but I was consistently getting to 70 workers before like 10 minutes and it was pretty insane. I kept going for fast third strategies.

It’s kind of incredible - I think to achieve the coveted APM I’ve always wanted, I just need to focus more on doing things, rather than doing them fast.

It’s working so far.

I still need to watch my minimap though.

But upgrades are surprising...I got in a few engagements, and it was kind of crazy - I expected to lose but I ended up CRUSHING. Weird stuff.

[raymondchougaming]

Hotkeying All of my Units

Oh my god, why didn’t I just do this more earlier? This is so good.

Also, the spend as little time on each action as possible idea is working quite nicely.

At the end of the day, APM is nothing more than knowing what you need to do, as well as how to do it.

[raymondchougaming]

The Terran Late Game (vs Zerg)

This post will cover 3 phases of the modern Terran vs Zerg matchup, namely the mid-late game, late game, and endgame. 

We will begin the discussion with remarks on the Zerg late-game unit composition, as well as the possible Terran unit compositions en riposte.

Zerg’s ultimate goal is to reach Brood Lords, Ultralisks, (I almost said defiler), Infestors, a lot of Corruptors, and perhaps Vipers (maybe with ling/bane support, especially as a means to replace army after the big engagement). In other words - units that kill our shit really easily, because if we’ve been going bio-mine all game, our units are quite volatile (glass cannon strats). If he maxes on his perfect composition...we’re going to have a hard time, guaranteed. 

Before I talk about deterring the Zerg, let’s first figure out how to (if, at all possible) go head to head with this army, and brainstorm the ideal unit composition, or perhaps a few, and then I’ll talk about this more after I explore unit tester. Terrain will most likely be key.

The battlecruiser should be the centerpiece of our unit composition. It’s beefy, has a lot of health, and deals a massive amount of damage. It has that epic teleport ability, and a skill that can pretty much one-hit any Zerg unit. Furthermore, Zerg has no strict anti-spellcaster (Terran has EMP, Protoss has feedback), so Yamatos will be just that much more powerful. Plus, the battlecruiser has the added bonus of being an air unit - and Ultras, Brood lords, and ling/bane cannot shoot up.

I’m not too fond of marines in the late-late game, since 55 health isn’t a lot, and if you consider the sheer amount of micro it takes to keep all of them going - it will detract from other things. Ultras shred through marines, fungals (especially since most maps don’t have that many open spaces - and open spaces in some sense favor the Zerg), and Brood Lords ruin the effectiveness of marines by creating a “wall” and reducing our maneuverability. Even though they have such effective DPS, I’m a firm believer that once tier 3 is reached, Terran should start to move away from Marines, and maybe even marauders as well. We saw this in the Brood War meta - strategies began shifting from 9:00 pre-hive 2 base timings to a quick third and then a killing blow before the Zerg could get 4 operating bases to 4 barracks into mech switch .This was because once the Zerg got Guardians and ultralisks, Terrans simply could not hold them off, particularly if there were a decent amount of defilers out. Irradiates on ultralisks hurt the Terran more than the Zerg, and chitinous plating +5 armor was just too much. People cite DPS all the time as to why the Marine should remain a late-game unit for the Terran, but the BC/Banshee does much better for the amount of health. The DPS is useless if you can’t keep the marines alive, and with the sheer amount of splash Zerg will have in the late game, it’s just not worth it.

Perhaps a few marauders for the ever-so-useful concussive shell?

The ghost was a very popular late game unit in Wings of Liberty, from what I saw. I’m still catching up on how the HotS meta evolved, since I wasn’t around, but the ghost was used quite effectively. I’m not too fond of the new snipe ability, because of how long it takes to set up, but it does a ton of damage. It is, however, far too easy to kill the ghost unless there is something preventing the Zerg from getting to them (I’ll get to this later). If the Zerg makes a lot of infesors/vipers, I believe ghosts are important, but they’re just a good unit in general. They do a fair amount of damage, and allow us to pressure Zergs with nukes. Brood lords are slow, and defensive nukes are very good for the zoning game we’ll find ourselves playing. 

The liberator is crucial - once sieged, the DPS is just INSANE, though it severely lacks mobility, and is very vulnerable to corruptors. The range upgrade, however, just makes the unit borderline unfair, particularly on maps with a lot of cliffs. Unsieged, the splash damage may be useful against corruptors, but I’ll have to try that out in unit tester. I think the liberator will be another crucial unit against the Zerg army, unless they decide to go full air as well.

The Viking is an essential support unit for battlecruiser - not much needs to be said here.

In the later game, Banshees once again become effective, since Zergs will now be moving their gas away from mutalisks and onto the later game units. Mutalisks sort of lose their utility in the later stages of the game, since they take up a lot of supply and make the Zerg endgame force that much weaker. The mobility they have is really, really good, but Terrans will make a shit ton of turrets, and leave a few mines/thors at home. 

Ravens are good, but I don’t know about making them en masse. A lot of people do that, and I’ve seen it utilized to great effect, and this is something I’ll have to play around with. HSM seems really good on Brood Lords/cramped corruptors and can force positions, and PDD is almost unfair in Viking vs Corruptor fights. This ties in nicely with the Banshees and the BCs, since it means we’ll have tech lab’d ports, and the DPS from autoturrets is pretty crazy as well. Autoturrets can also serve as protection for the Ghosts as well. The only caveat is the sheer amount of gas they cost.

Thors are very good because of the splash damage against corruptors - but that’s about it really. They’re slow, clunky, and kind of just die really fast, particularly if they’re not in range of anything. They are, however, a very good meatshield for the ghosts.

Widow mines lose their utility once Zerg gets a lot of ultralisks out, since ultralisks are quite large in size and the mines no longer do splash damage. They could potentially DESTROY Brood Lords and corruptors (especially with drilling claws), but if Broodlings occupy the space they need, I don’t see them getting very far. When Zerg begins replenishing their army with ling/bane, however, I could see their effectiveness returning.

Siege tanks - almost useless once Brood lord/ultra is out.

Cyclones - LOL

Hellions - Actually, surprisingly useful in low numbers, a very small resource investment for potential HUGE economic damage, have great mobility and vision all over the map. Just don’t make too many. A great response to mass ling/bane as well. Hellions can even kite ultras. The only problem I foresee is the potential infrastructure switch required.

GOALS WITH OUR LATE GAME:

-Reach a solid endgame, particularly with our base-racing advantage -Be able to kill the Infestor-Broodlord-Ultralisk-Corruptor (and maybe viper) force, even if the fight is terrain dependent -Have sufficient infrastructure to support a rebuttal to the remax on lings/banelings -Be able to defend our bases

Compositions to try:

So immediately, Ghost/Liberator/Viking/Eventual BCs/few Ravens is sounding particularly attractive - but with smaller ghost counts. The snipe function on the Ghost will shred through those Brood Lords (provided we kill the Overseers), but infestors are a large worry, considering that they can just fungal all of our air units in place repeatedly (unless we snipe them first), so keeping a good spread will be important. (None of those stacked Vikings!)

I’ve decided to ditch the thors for now, since HSM + PDD with liberator splash sounds really good. I need to unit test to see how liberators fare against mass corruptors/Brood lords (probably very poorly). Honestly...Battlecruisers fare pretty well against corruptors as well.

If they make a lot of ultralisks, we’ll get a lot of liberators, but we need something on the ground to stop their progress. Ultras shred through thors pretty quickly, but so far that sounds like the only option I have. So if I see ultras, I may get a few thors...but then this will add to the amount of micro we have to perform, since we’ll need the thors to target fire the air units. 

It seems like no matter what, we are always at the APM disadvantage...

Raven/BC/Liberator with Ghost/Viking/Thor Support is starting to sound good, but we have no real means of spending our minerals. Perhaps hellions? They can kite the ultralisks, and amassing them early would be really, really good for potential ling counterattacks. 

There is another style...where we go mainly MMMM with Liberator/Viking Support, but this style is much more APM intensive, and simple control mistakes could cost us the game. However, in terms of infrastructure, this is a significantly better style.

INFRASTRUCTURE CONSIDERATIONS

Let us suppose that we are going into Sky Terran.

So the biggest problem Terran has against Zerg in terms of switching to Starport tech is the problem of upgrades. Terran seeks to get 3/3 Bio in the midgame, simply due to the power of bio-mine (or other bio based compositions) in the midgame - there is so much DPS, mobility, and other things that makes them too good not to use. Only when Zerg really starts to get enough DPS that they can kill the bio units before they are able to become very effective do we need to make a transition. 

Zerg is, however, researching +1 armor or +1 attack on air units via their Spire if they get a lot of mutas...(usually +1 armor, from what I’ve seen), so it will be of great benefit to us to research plating early on.

The second problem to look for is the mass amount of Barracks we’ll have...if we open bio-mine, we’ll find ourselves on 3 bases with like 8 Barracks, 1 factory, and 1 starport. Our Barracks will mostly be inactive if we suddenly switch to Starport tech, and we’ll have to invest significantly more resources in infrastructure if we want to support our “ideal compositions.” The only thing the barracks will really be useful is for producing Ghosts...and I mean I guess if we want to mass ghost that’s really good, but the space-blocking features of the Broodlings are a little too much for them to be useful. Perhaps old Brood War style 4 rax into mech styles may be useful, but navigating a successful against a scary Zerg does seem quite difficult. 

We could easily, however, transition into this style of late-game using Mech, so this will depend.

I think, for either style, what we should do is to get a large amount of Barracks (for MMMM), or a large amount of Factories (if going mech), and start adding Starports (aiming for 6 Starports or more) in the mid-game, with no addons at first. We are doomed to have a reactor on one of those Starports, just by the nature of our openings, but whatever it is, we should seek to get a large amount of Starports, and then slam down tech labs on all of them later. We could produce Battlecruisers 6 at a time! 

We should definitely research Vehicle/Ship plating as either style, since it will protect our Liberators/Medivacs/Vikings, and be useful later on. A second armory I think will be key into the late game. 

If Zerg chooses to remass on lings, we switch back to medivacs (and a few liberators), and MMMM once again if we went mass barracks, and mass hellions with a few mines if we were going mech. 

I think pre-emptive Vikings are essential as either style, once we see corruptors being made, so that we can amass a decently large Viking count for the final engagement, and begin replacing marines with Ghosts, and keeping a moderately high Marauder count. Concussive shell marauders actually fare quite well against the ultralisks, and with superior control in Liberator zones, we just may come out on top (assuming our Vikings are decimating everything in the skies). 

Zerg will have the infrastructure advantage in the sense that they are spending less resources on “production facilities,” but Terran has the significant advantage in the sense that we can sacrifice our workers to free up more supply, which will enable us to have a larger army during the big engagement. 

So I have come up with a tl;dr:

THE BIG ENGAGEMENT:

Get battlecruisers

If they try to Viper drag you, then just teleport back LOL

High corruptor count? Viking support. You will have more units than him because of the supply lead. If the corruptor count is absolutely ridiculous, try to bait them into a few thor shots. Liberators can help out, and so can PDD.

Infestors? The ghosts will chase them out, or you can Yamato them, or just spread your shit out and drop mules for repair

A lot of Brood lords? We barely have ground units - just run them away, or drop a defensive nuke

A lot of ultralisks? Liberators/Banshees. Just a few banshees - maybe crit mass liberators with Viking support can destroy corruptors (unit tester!). If mech, kite with hellions; if Bio, kite with conc shell through liberator fields and Ghost snipes. This is HARD. Alternatively, you can kind of just Yamato the ultralisks.

Win

Essential to:

To be continued

[raymondchougaming]

Exchanges

It’s quite obvious to people that we should always seek to perform an action which requires less resources than our opponent’s response (at least, in some relative sense). This is the whole idea of cost efficiency - marines are a good unit since they’re so cheap and can do so much (same with Zerglings)

We see it manifest in slightly subtler forms as well, such as trading tangible resources (vespene gas/minerals) for non-tangible resources (positioning, time, wasted movement, vision, etc)

For example, Protoss warping in a dark templar somewhere. It’s cheap af, and you have the chance to pull a LOT of units out of position.

I think the dark templar drop is powerful in another way though - in the sense that it is cost efficient in a non-tangible resource that lies outside the game - APM.

The three main outside game resources are APM, brainpower, and eye positioning. If you can use less APM and force your opponent to use a lot (Protoss comes to mind), then you have done a great move. The DT drop is a great example - just warp in, get him to mineral line, and attack. A response would take significantly more actions - scan, attack, chase, etc…

If we examine any player input as some sort of resource, the game then becomes a lot more interesting. Things that are, in terms of in-game resources, wasteful may suddenly become not wasteful if we look at how much attention we need to give it. Units in LotV tend to have much, much higher micro requirements than their WoL/HotS counterparts, but take an example like a Thor. A thor is hella expensive - but you don’t really need to micro it. It serves its utility using the least amount of motions. 

Marines, on the other hand, are dirt cheap, but require copious amounts of micro to be effective. Tanks are a different story - siege them up, and they do their thing, even though they’re resource expensive. 

The cyclone is an example of a really expensive unit that is REALLY “APM-cheap,” since you barely have to touch it. I mean you pull it back here and there, but unless they have cyclones as well, you can kind of just 1a it. 

The liberator is one of those weird units that, depending on the situation, could be really APM cheap or APM expensive. In battles, they’re VERY expensive, since you need to constantly reposition them; on defense, they’re cheap AF, a shit ton of damage for almost no actions, and as a harassment unit, they’re very cheap on APM. You click once, and then twice to get outta there. Zergs will have to move a queen, move all of their drones, and then move all of their drones back. 

As viewed from the APM perspective, we enjoy harassment strategies in general, since the defender needs to both get their workers to safety AND put units in place, whereas the offender only needs to get in and get out. 

A pre-emptive defense trades in-game resources (minerals for a turret) for out-game resources (APM, as well as attention/ease of mind - if I know I have a turret, I’ll be less inclined to pay attention to that area). Some complain “oh, that turret is 2 marines you could have had” or some bullshit like that - and while I agree it’s important not to overbuild defenses - you gain the utility (especially if you lack vision) of being able to more aggressively posture an army, especially a slower army.

Getting a sensor tower and not building defenses (most top players will build defenses anyway) is dangerous, since it commits eye movement, as well as attention span as resources, and even then is somewhat risky. Your eyes are forced to pay closer attention to the minimap, and while this is not a problem for some, it can still be quite dangerous. If you have a lot of both, by all means go for it, but for us mortal humans...

So when considering exchanges, or positional moves/unit choices, perhaps human input should be a factor for consideration as well, since every player can at most have their screen in one location, and be performing exactly one action at a time.

[raymondchougaming]

A Few Bad Habits

These are habits that are still around from Brood War, and probably need to kick...or some things that have just always been bad in general, even in Brood War.

-Not tapping at every moment -”Screen check”; this was necessary in Brood War to some extent simply due to the fact that you couldn’t add multiple buildings in one hotkey, so you may “screen skip” back and forth just to check on everything. In fact, I didn’t hotkey my command centers - I hotkeyed my comsats and would place my mouse where the CC should be, double tap the comsat hotkey, and use that to check. I could do this really, really fast...but now we have multiple CCs on the same hotkey, so this is unnecessary. Furthermore, it detracts unnecessarily from my control. I got really good at doing this with my reaper - just need to do this with everything else. So instead of 112211221122 just 1212121212 would be fine. -Boxing the unit on the screen instead of using an army hotkey to collect them; I noticed this when I was watching my own VODs -Not hotkeying my units (I need to practice this since I’m not fast enough_ -Not really a bad habit, but not having thought through the layout/defenses of my expansions on maps, in particular with respect to how I plan on playing -Not clearing out an expansion location before I take it -Inaccurate minimap clicking

Will work on those things.

[raymondchougaming]

“The Next Thing,” “As Little As Possible”

I’ve noticed one problem I have when playing is that I tend to fixate on whatever I’m doing at the moment - probably because I get so enveloped in whatever is going on, I tunnel vision. This is a problem, because I’ll be constantly watching the minimap - until a fight, and then all of a sudden a little too late I notice an oracle on my minimap...

I think I have a tendency to fixate on whatever it is. There are a few solutions to this:

-Zone out, and “absentmindedly” do things. Make myself a sponge. If this were to be the case, however, then I would have to make everything a habit already. I’m not quite there yet - I still need to think.

-Always be focusing on “the next thing,” and to focus on everything “as little as possible.” What is the smallest amount of attention I can give to whatever it is I’m doing? The danger with this, however, is I may abandon a task, and then all of a sudden something changes and it suddenly requires a lot of my attention.

-Relax? Tension tends to make you tunnel vision.

-Just look at the minimap and spam your hotkeys.

This is something I really need to work on - it’s kind of hard still for me to micro in 2 spots at once. Perhaps think about “sequencing?” Making to do lists is time consuming in the brain though.

The “next thing” approach I really like...since in terms of macro that’s a great way to think. We’re always focusing on “the next thing,” and trying to deal with what is currently in front of us as little as possible - this encourages macro since we want to “be done with the battle” and macro. This can apply to strategic thought too...

[raymondchougaming]

Slow is Smooth...Smooth is Fast

This is a maxim that is commonly toted about in the Gracie Academy by my instructor Alex...and he’s completely right. “Slow” doesn’t mean physically slow - it means slow in practice, and “slow” in thought - meaning not panicked. A complex thought can be reduced to a simple one by means of vertical integration, a topic I discussed in a previous post (treating multiple actions as one action, contrasted to horizontal integration, which is treating a task that elapses over a given time as one action), and this allows us to do “less,” which panics us less, and therefore slows our thought.

By being slow, and accurate, we can cut out all unnecessary motions, and be faster by means of economy of motion. I’ve been doing this with my mouse movement and my APM actually went up by 50...it’s really weird.

Do not try to be quick with your mouse - move only where it needs to be, and be accurate. Don’t overshoot, don’t undershoot - just get there, one straight path from A to B, and then right on to the next task, no pause.

If you watch KeSPA players during their prime (2007-2011), you will see this in most of their mouse control. Particularly Bisu, Canata, Jaedong, and Fantasy - they had incredible mouse control.

The next thing I noticed in a lot of Brood War players is something really subtle, but it is anticipation of where the next task is going to be mouse wise while skipping to it. This makes a tiny but crucial difference, and those few frames may be crucial in situations such as reaper micro.

One thing that all Terrans should do is use a screen hotkey to send workers back to mine after building a building. For most people it’s something like B - S - F2 - shift - right click on minerals (for me it’s F - F - shiftZ - right click). What I had been doing for the longest time was hitting the screenkey, seeing where the minerals were, and then going to mine...but this actually reduces the time it takes to do said action by a third. If the mouse is moving as your hand is going to the screenkey, then you can right click on the minerals the moment your screen skips to the minerals, and then immediately do something else.

This may not sound like a big deal, but this will drastically speed up every action, and makes you more aware. This is like a next level type of awareness - you already know what things will look like on the screen, and you send your mouse there as you double tap a hotkey or something.

My reaper control has been getting better thanks to this...

[raymondchougaming]

A Few Quick TvT Analyses (3/20)

I think instead of trying to compile a giant post of everything, I’ll do a little bit each day in separate posts. I will keep all build orders/timings on the same post, way back though. I will start to explore the early midgame and the midgame in upcoming posts though, since I think I’ve pretty much mapped all of the early timings...

-TY vs GuMiho (Abyssal Reef - excellent defense of Proxy Rax reaper, and excellent playing from behind, good doom drop defense, and a fast quick 4 bases) -TY vs GuMiho (Bel’Shir Vestige - Constant trading of drops; analyze how TY could have prevented that and what Gumiho did well) -TY vs GuMiho (Cactus Valley)

...actually I’ll just analyze the whole damn series

A few considerations as Terran:

-Where are his Vikings? -Where are his Medivacs? -Where are his Marines? -Where are his tanks?

Interestingly enough, so many decisions can be reduced to just asking those questions.

Will do this analysis tomorrow.

EDIT:...by tomorrow I meant the day after LOL

[raymondchougaming]

A Few TvT Replay Analyses

Innovation vs Ryung, Cactus Valley

In the midgame, both players are placing single marines in positions where drops would pass over, since it’s such a big threat.

Innovation leaves his Vikings in the empty space next to his main (where doom drops are likely to approach), since Ryung is in that direction. There are also a few random marines along the map where he can catch drops.

Ryung has a few marines wisely positioned to find drops.

Both players constantly battle for the watchtower (drop spotting)

Innovation took a VERY fast third after doing damage to Ryung with the cyclone opener. Ryung made a micro mistake not repairing the cyclone and getting trapped in the corner.

Little marine hitsquads running around are an attempt to remove the marine spotting for both players

The watchtower on Cactus valley just barely reaches the tip of the 8 line things in the middle

Sensor tower, turret, two tanks at the third for defense...?

Innovation goes sensor tower crazy

Analyze weak points in your setup, and place spotters there

Innovation pushes along his weak drop path, so the Vikings aren’t too far

Good siege spot - behind the spokes in the middle

Liberators are good

Innovation got his ups AFTER his infrastructure

Innovation vs Ryung, Proxima Station

If you know the position of their Vikings, your drops are way more powerful

Inno sends in a drop to the back, and it gets rekt but sees the Viking stuck in the back so he drops all his shit in Ryung’s main

Inno also sees Ryung’s army retreat up the high ground pod, so he deems it safe to drop. He scans first though.

TURRETS UP ON THAT SPOT ON THIS MAP.

Inno keeps most of his tanks unsieged so that they can move around between his bases

Honestly...there was nothing stopping Ryung from dropping Inno as well.

More turrets?

It seems like TvT can be reduced to a positioning game, with the doom drop being a constant threat. The idea is to either: get them out of position with the doom drop, or use the threat of the doom drop to get them out of position for a sick engage. Usually the first happens.

To win: Get them out of position/draw their Vikings somewhere and doom drop them. No one will turret spam and if they do, you’ll have way more marines so just go fuck them up. Leave Vikings in your doom drop path during neutral game when not doing anything. When moving out, leave like 1-2 Vikings anyway, and don’t let them get a straight path to your doom drop location.

[raymondchougaming]

Overview of Games on 3/16/2017

I played a few games on ladder, and versus Scotty today. Some interesting things happened...

The mine I set up for the cloaked banshee...actually hit the cloaked banshee LOL

I somehow scouted cloaked banshee and didn’t build a viking. If I built that viking, I would have won that game

I lost a game where I had a 30 kill banshee, simply due to a drop that I knew how to defend

My mechanics are still bad...I’ll go like 20 seconds without building units or workers. I’m focusing on army movement right now, but I need to practice macroing while doing that.

I need to think more...and be more focused about what I am doing.

I’m not very good when my actions are interrupted.

Versus Scotty:

Learn how to defend the third base on Bel’shir Vestige. The plan was working! I should have dropped when I saw his entire army at my third...would have rekt him.

Need to build static defenses, get earlier turrets for when mutas are out, etc.

I need to pay more attention

I need to come up with some clever ways to get vision, and not send units out to die randomly

Get a better computer

Watching the replays objectively though, I’d say I moved my units quite well, but there were a few fundamental flaws in how I was setting up my third base.

Despite my less-than-perfect mechanics, I’m still out-macroing everyone (except maybe Scotty), and I always have way more shit. I guess that’s something to work on...

[raymondchougaming]

Unit Comps: Terran; Marine-Tank-Medivac vs Ling-Bane-Muta (Part 3)

Here is the final part (at least, in March 2017) of this post. Holy crap, it’s been long. First, I want to talk about how Zergs will try to tear us apart, and how we will attempt to mitigate these actions.

Zerg will try to deny our vision

By doing so, Zerg increases the chances of catching us unsieged, if we’re not scanning ahead that much

If the map has watchtowers, we’ll push through those lanes as possible

If not, we’ll send marines ahead, or scan ahead, or key vulnerability points as we continue our push

Zerg will try to slow down our push in order to get their fourth up

This can be done a few ways, by:

Counterattacking with lings or mutas; we negate these by having good defense/rally at home, and shoving harder

Flying their mutas around us to force us to move cautiously; in that case, we keep the tanks at the center of the marines, and stim a chunk off to shoot at the mutas

Darting around behind us with Zerglings to threaten a surround, but then pulling away as we slightly retreat. We ideal with this by spreading out our tanks more linearly? Hmm...perhaps we shove harder, knowing that some of their army is out of position. But by doing this, we give up our reinforcing path...if we go home and get the rest of the boys, he’ll just counterattack us. So I suppose the solution is to shove so hard so fast that they have no choice but to engage us...or we send a drop over (assuming the mutas are nearby) to get those mofos to run home.

Cutting off our reinforcement lines. We can either: sac the first push and work on strengthening the second one, but doing as much damage as we can with the first before it goes down. Remember, we’re trading mainly minerals for gas, and the more gas we make Zerg spend, the weaker their late game army will be. The goal, at the end of the day, is to keep that gas count low. Not allow it to happen: Have good unit placement to see when their lings are running around, and then push harder to force them back, or pull back slightly. If you pull back too much though, you risk letting them get their fourth up...so then we drop!

If they try to cut down our reinforcement lines, then they MUST bring all of their ling/bane, because otherwise when armies are split, I’m convinced that MTM will win in even numbers. And we might lose all of our reinforcements, but we kill the base and then go home and defend. We design our base in a way to slow them down.

Zerg goes for a bust

Build tanks

Okay. Now, let’s talk map specifics. In the current map pool, there are a few maps that I really like Marine-Tank on, I’ll talk about why, and then the general attack patterns:

BEL’SHIR VESTIGE

While this map is also really good for Bio-Mine, I LOVE MTM on this map, after the previous discussion. Let me just circle some REALLY good Tank positions.

DO NOT LET ZERG BREAK THE ROCKS DOWN. Keep them up, and keep them busy so that they don’t have time to keep them up. Every time they try to break them down, siege a tank tanks and blow up their lings. That central attack path could really ruin your day. We’ll talk about when things go wrong later.

The little red squares are EXCELLENT places to engage the Zerg, in accordance to my theory. The little yellow star is where our play should revolve around, not only because it gives us our watchtower, but because it is the area closest to all of the possible counterattack paths that Zerg could take (pink, dotted).

The pink paths are the ones that we continuously attack along in order to shut down Zerg’s 4th base. We let them get the 3 in the back (they’re guaranteed to), and just keep wailing on those. They’ll give eventually. 

For the path on the right, I chose to attack on the lower ground for a few reasons:

The path directly blocks the orange expansion to the south of it

It’s hard for Zerg to break the rocks down (because we have vision of it and will just go murder them/they won’t have time

It’s harder to surround us (as opposed to if we went up to the high ground pod; Zerg would then go through the natural and hit us on 3-4 fronts, whereas here we’re backed against a wall kind of so at most 2 fronts)

Narrow choke to wide choke (minerals yeah!)

If Zerg positions their units on that cliff...well they can’t really reach us and we can do annoying medivac marine micro

It’s shorter

The path on the left is just super strong in general, and after pushing there, we can easily drop the main. 

The green path is the murder path.

That’s it for now, will do more maps tomorrow.