Day 16, Teching Up as Terran

Back for the moment. Life hasn't been ideal the past few days for getting blog, practice, and stream in, so I prioritized practice. This is partially due to the fact that I will be traveling a lot the next couple of weeks. This will make practice more difficult and streaming impossible, but I should have plenty of time to keep blogs coming for each day.

Tech development mistakes was the plan before, so today I'll continue with that. These mistakes seem to be the most difficult to identify. Obviously with certain builds you will develop your tech in a different fashion from other builds, especially as terran. Because of this, there are very few general rules that can be applied to tech development, and each build will need to be examined more carefully.

There are a couple of basic ideas we can follow though. These are gas management and upgrades. Gas needs to be handled very carefully as a terran, especially as we enter the mid and late game. Because our army is so mineral focused instead of gas focused we need to be very careful about when we choose to take additional gas. Most of the time we don't want all of the gas that is available to us because we simply can't use it. We are not protoss or zerg: it is not possible to ignore the fact that we have 3000 gas sitting in the bank and simply fix it by throwing down high templar or infestors. All of our infrastructure is developed far more carefully than that, and this includes the collection of gas. So whenever you see gas piling too high or you don't have enough, recognize that as a mistake.

Upgrades (specifically weapon and armor) are pretty simple. You always want to be getting them from the moment the ebay or armory goes down. Upgrades are very, very cheap in terms of resources. The only expensive part of upgrades is the time that they require. Take this simple scenario. You are a terran player whose build requires that you attack with 30 marines. You have a few extra resources, but are unsure of where to spend them. A plus 1 weapon upgrade will give you a 16-20% damage increase (based on armor of the opponent's units). It will also cost you 225 minerals, 100 gas, and 195 seconds (ebay + upgrade). To get the equivalent damage increase even this early in the game you will need 5-6 additional marines. This will cost you at least 400 minerals and 190 seconds, almost the same. The main difference between the two methods is that the marines provide a temporary damage boost, whereas the upgrade provides a permanent damage boost. This makes the upgrade far more cost effective in a game that continues past this attack (which most will once we are actually against good players) and just as cost effective in a game that ends. This makes the upgrade a clearly superior route to take, and this effect only gets exaggerated as the game continues and armies get larger. In short, get upgrades. You will love watching your 3/3 MMM ball tear through a seemingly superior 1/1 protoss deathball.

Everything else is very build specific. Most of the time for these builds if you end up with more gas than you need for whatever tech you are getting, you either were late to the tech or took gas too early. Watch for those, review your game to identify the mistake, and check pro games if you are unsure of your timings. This will help you ensure that tech development is no longer a problem.

I have a few ideas for topics to cover while traveling. I am considering things more outside the game such as:

When to Take Breaks
How to Stay Motivated
Terran Hotkeys
How to Avoid Injury

or if people want I can continue on to micro mistakes.

Stream: No stream this week due to travel
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Zultar327 @Zultar327

Replays: Replayfu giving me difficulties, may be related to patch. Going to start looking into alternatives.