Day2, Decisions and Execution

Yesterday I sort of rushed out the entry, and given the topic that meant it was rather boring. I apologize for that. On to something better.

Decisions

Continuing from yesterday, this is what we use our knowledge for. Decisions consist of all of the choices we make before a game of SC2, from deciding on a build order to reacting to an opponents 2 base colossus push. Before is a key word here, and very intentionally used. Being required to make a decision in game is in and of itself a mistake. It takes precious time away that could be used for execution, arguably the most difficult of the 3 parts of SC2 strategy. Because of this, the ideal case is that all decisions are made outside of the game. This is fantastic news, because it means that we can both work on improving this out of game, and use practice to determine if we are able to transfer what we have decided into our games. Even better, until we reach a very high level of play, we can learn what decisions are correct by studying others, which is much faster than simply pounding out game after game to figure it out. Finally, Decisions in essence are our guide for or instruction manual for how to play a game of SC2, and form the framework for the last piece to strategy, Execution.

Execution

This is what we use all of our decisions and knowledge for. It is everything we do in game. From the moment we make a worker to the time someone types "gg" we are in the execution phase. Micro, Macro and everything in between fit into this category. This is the part of Starcraft that most people will focus on, as it is the largest, most obvious and most understandable. It is also the most difficult. Everybody practices their execution all the time, because it is so hard. However, it is also the least important. This is because learning what to do must come before doing it. All of this means that when trying to improve, execution will be the part we examine last, even though most of our time will be spent on it (as it is the largest part of strategy). Improving this area of play is the most time consuming, and the primary way players do it is by playing game after game after game. This works, but is likely not the best solution. That's because there are so many factors that go into execution. Micro and Macro are the first obvious division. But even these can be divided into topics like making workers, constructing depots/pylons/overlords, stutter stepping, forcefielding, and a plethora of other skills. Now I'm not trying to say that just playing isn't good. But what if we developed a way to identify problem areas, and then created tools to focus on those specific skills. How much faster could we get better? This concept is what I will discuss with you tomorrow.

Edit:

Stream twitch.tv/zultar327 up around 10 PM CST every night.
Twitter @Zultar327

Last edit: 2012-07-10 09:44:49