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I have a serious problem with my play that I would like help with.
I am a diamond terran player but I have been doing this since gold league and thats why its such a bad habit to break. I make wayyy to many scv's... even if I dont lose any I continue to make scv's even after losing a maxed army. Im not sure why, it just happens. and Im not talking about only making 60-80 scvs, Im talking anywhere between 90-120 each game that lasts more than 15 minutes. As soon as I hit 3 bases, my scv count goes through the roof. dont get me wrong now, my economy is great but, it causes me to lose ALOT.. especially vs toss maxed army.
To be honest, I believe the reason that I make so many scv's is because my hotkeys make it so easy to do so. I use grid and my control groups are set at:
1. All CCs, OCs, and PF,s 2. Barracks 3. Army 4. Factory (Vs. toss, ghosts and vikings) 5. Starports
People say spamming is bad but, I believe thats another reason why I make so many scv's. My apm according to SC2 Gears is usually between 250-260 with around 40% redundancy because im constantly spamming 1,2,4,5,3,1,2,4,5,3.... over and over.
Do you guys think that changing my control groups would help anything or is it a good thing that I overmake scv's since I still see pro's who forget to build scv's constantly?
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im a protoss player but ,
the worker thing is an easy fix. Just constantly tell yourself to STOP. having high apm is no good if its doing harm.
About the hotkeys, i would strongly consider changing them around. When i started, i only left 2 hotkeys for army and i strongly regret it. Try to have at least 3 hotkeys for army and practice using them, and your control will get way better if you get used to it.
Terran definitely needs the least workers out of all the races. Make less, and spend that apm toward something more useful, like constant dropping/not getting supply blocked/better macro overall. good luck
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No. I don't think changing your control groups would help.
You just need to watch replays and challenge yourself into realizing when you have too many scvs, or when you need to stop producing them. Terran generally wants 65 scvs. Later game you can sack 40 of them for more army supply.
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Trust me, I have tried to tel myself to just stop making workers but its a mindless thing. I dont even think about it, I just do it. I dont tell myself to make workers, its just and automatic thing.
It has gotten so bad, that I cant even all in correctly. I cant proxy 2-rax or no shit like that because I have the bad habit of making scv's by accident so instead of doing 11/11 and stopping workers at 12, ill do 11/11 and make like 4 more workers and wont have enough to make marines and eventually get supply blocked because of it.
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If you have that many SCV then probably your bases are oversaturated, aren't they?
Maybe you could try checking the saturation of your bases often, so you can realize when to stop making scv's, as long as you don't plan to expand soon.
I don't think it has something to do with the control groups. I changed from nexus 1 to nexus 4, and once I was used to it, my production was quite the same.
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On February 21 2012 08:48 AeroEffect wrote: Trust me, I have tried to tel myself to just stop making workers but its a mindless thing. I dont even think about it, I just do it. I dont tell myself to make workers, its just and automatic thing.
It has gotten so bad, that I cant even all in correctly. I cant proxy 2-rax or no shit like that because I have the bad habit of making scv's by accident so instead of doing 11/11 and stopping workers at 12, ill do 11/11 and make like 4 more workers and wont have enough to make marines and eventually get supply blocked because of it. Then stop...
You can't just give up on breaking a bad habit. Changing control groups won't help at all, it'll just confuse your muscle memory for a while, then you'll go back to spamming SCVs.
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On February 21 2012 08:51 Antylamon wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2012 08:48 AeroEffect wrote: Trust me, I have tried to tel myself to just stop making workers but its a mindless thing. I dont even think about it, I just do it. I dont tell myself to make workers, its just and automatic thing.
It has gotten so bad, that I cant even all in correctly. I cant proxy 2-rax or no shit like that because I have the bad habit of making scv's by accident so instead of doing 11/11 and stopping workers at 12, ill do 11/11 and make like 4 more workers and wont have enough to make marines and eventually get supply blocked because of it. Then stop... You can't just give up on breaking a bad habit. Changing control groups won't help at all, it'll just confuse your muscle memory for a while, then you'll go back to spamming SCVs. Thats like telling telling a smoker of 30 years to stop. Its not that easy trust me, I've tried. I probably could slow it down or at least figure out how to stop it by checking saturation on my bases. I get over saturated quick on my nat because I want to be able to immediately transfer over my workers to my 3rd when I take it.
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Just watch couple replays and see when you have 65 workers. For me if I open 1 rax fe, I have around 65 when I'm taking my third. Usually I check how saturated bases are then and produce one or two rounds more or stop.
Or just check ingame clock, for me it's better to link things to my build.
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Well, if I am going for the macro game. I know I will have 60 SCV's by 15 minutes. So I pretty much almost stop building them all together by this time UNLESS if I have lost a fair few. Obviously, this method only works in games which run smoothly for me.
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On February 21 2012 09:00 AeroEffect wrote: Thats like telling telling a smoker of 30 years to stop. Its not that easy trust me, I've tried. I probably could slow it down or at least figure out how to stop it by checking saturation on my bases. I get over saturated quick on my nat because I want to be able to immediately transfer over my workers to my 3rd when I take it. So you're comparing having done something mindlessly for a year or so a 30-year long addiction to a substance that is known to be addictive. That's just insulting. Seriously, smokers can make a conscious effort to quit smoking but just can't fight the physical urge for nicotine. If you just make a conscious effort to think about not making SCVs, you'll be able to stop...
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Check your mineral saturation. Occasionally when you have the free time to macro and you're getting nervous about scv count, make little boxes in your worker line to select all your mineral scvs. You want 16 scvs on your mineral line for optimal saturation, which is 2 "rows" if you look at the unit selections on the bottom. Quickly send any excess scvs over to another mineral line. If you're oversaturated on 3 bases, either grab even more bases and saturate 4-5 bases (not recommended, maxed army will be too small) or build macro orbitals to spend any excess minerals and suicide excess scvs.
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I used to play TvZ where I would make over 120 workers and still somehow win.. basically, I've begun using F2-F5, etc to go through my bases for scv transfers and started to count how many scvs I have at each base. You know how much you want at each base for optimal saturation, so just box the number of scvs on your minerals, know that each row is 8, and then do simple addition.
Once you know you are saturated on 3 bases, just stop. It might take a while but it's pretty easy to not hit "1s" because towards that point in the game, you already have a good economy and your attention should be much more focused on army movement, adding production as necessary and drops, etc rather than worker production/muling.
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This is often a side effect of not actually looking at your base (Something p/t dont have to do as much as Z). I see this a lot when I watch replays of my opponents' perspective, they spend all their time microing their army and rarely look at whats going on at home.
As a zerg player i constantly count my drones and observe my level of saturation at each base. I aim for around 3 lines of drones (16 on minerals, 6 on gas = 22, 3 lines of drones is 24) per base for the early/midgame, thats a goal of around 75 workers total. Late game I might go up to 80, distribute them a little more spaced out, under saturate on minerals to harvest more gas. Anyway, the specifics of what I need aren't important, but knowing how to quickly count workers and assess your economy IS important.
Just make a habit of looking at how many SCVs are at your bases every few minutes. If they are criss-crossing and look cluttered like an ant colony, you have too many at that base. If you have that going on at all your bases, you're either mined out or have way too many workers! A simple ctrl+click will select them all at one base and you can count for yourself. If you've got more than 3 lines of SCVs at every base, you have too many and its time to stop making them or take more bases!
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Think about why you are pressing 1ss as opposed to just pressing them as some sort of conditioned reflex. If you are oversaturated (look at your mining operations from time to time), expand more or simply stop making workers.
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Sounds like Idra has this same problem.
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Why don't you just play macro then? if that is your issue, which i have had this, you want to go to your base, select all the workers and see roughly how many there are, then if therre are too many there, then you should probably send some to die and attack move them. Really i think its just a thing to condition yourself to not do this rather than find a trick.
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On February 21 2012 08:28 AeroEffect wrote: I have a serious problem with my play that I would like help with.
I am a diamond terran player but I have been doing this since gold league and thats why its such a bad habit to break. I make wayyy to many scv's... even if I dont lose any I continue to make scv's even after losing a maxed army. Im not sure why, it just happens. and Im not talking about only making 60-80 scvs, Im talking anywhere between 90-120 each game that lasts more than 15 minutes. As soon as I hit 3 bases, my scv count goes through the roof. dont get me wrong now, my economy is great but, it causes me to lose ALOT.. especially vs toss maxed army.
To be honest, I believe the reason that I make so many scv's is because my hotkeys make it so easy to do so. I use grid and my control groups are set at:
1. All CCs, OCs, and PF,s 2. Barracks 3. Army 4. Factory (Vs. toss, ghosts and vikings) 5. Starports
People say spamming is bad but, I believe thats another reason why I make so many scv's. My apm according to SC2 Gears is usually between 250-260 with around 40% redundancy because im constantly spamming 1,2,4,5,3,1,2,4,5,3.... over and over.
Do you guys think that changing my control groups would help anything or is it a good thing that I overmake scv's since I still see pro's who forget to build scv's constantly? You need to get into the habit of going to a CC, double click an SCV, and check the # of workers at each base.
If 2 pages, that's too many. Optimally, you should have exactly one page, or 1 page +2, depending on how you want to figure it out ...
Actually getting the right amount of workers is required in order to progress.
If you watch pro's, you'll see they constantly check the nr of workers at their bases.
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Actually-the easy fix is to get into the habit of cecking your scv count. If it gets too high--bring them with you on your next fight set to autorepair.
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On February 21 2012 09:00 AeroEffect wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2012 08:51 Antylamon wrote:On February 21 2012 08:48 AeroEffect wrote: Trust me, I have tried to tel myself to just stop making workers but its a mindless thing. I dont even think about it, I just do it. I dont tell myself to make workers, its just and automatic thing.
It has gotten so bad, that I cant even all in correctly. I cant proxy 2-rax or no shit like that because I have the bad habit of making scv's by accident so instead of doing 11/11 and stopping workers at 12, ill do 11/11 and make like 4 more workers and wont have enough to make marines and eventually get supply blocked because of it. Then stop... You can't just give up on breaking a bad habit. Changing control groups won't help at all, it'll just confuse your muscle memory for a while, then you'll go back to spamming SCVs. Thats like telling telling a smoker of 30 years to stop. Its not that easy trust me, I've tried. I probably could slow it down or at least figure out how to stop it by checking saturation on my bases. I get over saturated quick on my nat because I want to be able to immediately transfer over my workers to my 3rd when I take it.
Don't worry I've developed a patch(intended) for you that might be able to help with your worker problem. I call it muleorette(name a work in progress). When you start seeing you are saturated just put on the handy muleorette patch and you'll feel your need to make scvs drift away. Since you keep rationalizing why you cannot stop making scvs it is a good thing this patch exists!
Honestly it seems like more of a mental block where you are convinced you cannot stop, maybe try thinking / approaching the game differently, you shouldn't really be mindlessly doing things anyways and at diamond I think constant worker production is rarely ever a problem if you are macroing right for your other production you should be winning anyways.
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Really this is a great problem to have. Better to overmake than undermake.
I always under made workers with toss and terran when i started SC2, then i mained zerg and got better and now when i offrace i way way way over make workers.
My solution is just to get used to boxing mineral lines or control cliking workers and subtracting the stuck in geyser workers. Each row is 8 Workers so it's easy to say i have approx 2.5 rows of workers on minerals then i know i have about 20
+ Show Spoiler + If you know the total worker count you are shooting for its easy to set up the mental math in advance and then you can just box worker lines and know how to respond
you can control click as well but that requires as split second of mental math i would personally rather not do but its not hard to figure out (1 worker per geyser will be invisible due to mining if 3 are on each geyser)
TLDR: Box your mineral lines when you are getting close to saturation and expand when you start to get close to going over saturation limits. If you are saturating 3 bases send all SCV's or probes to the emptiest base and keep checking it, when its saturated cut workers and focus on army agression/army macro.
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On February 21 2012 10:08 lorkac wrote: Actually-the easy fix is to get into the habit of cecking your scv count. If it gets too high--bring them with you on your next fight set to autorepair.
I'm with him. Just check your saturation every now and again, if you're oversaturated on one or two bases its probably time to expand again. If you're oversaturated across 3 bases then bring them with you either on auto-repair or as tanks.
On the other hand, if you're a really good mech player having a lot of scvs isn't really a bad thing
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Put huge post-it notes all around your screen with "NO MOAR SCVS" or something to remind yourself. Change them every couple of days to keep it fresh and not get too "used" to them and end up ignoring them. Set an alarm on your phone to stop making SCVs at, say, 15 minutes into the game. Pull out your S key so you have to press it with a pencil, BoxeR style. BitByBit your extra SCVs. Play 100 games vs AI just to cut SCVs at the appropriate time.
Your control groups are fine and very macro-focused, except having only 1 easily reachable army group is going to hinder your engagements and micro a lot. I've recently switched to the Drewbie style 1-3 army, 4 OCs, 5 Rax, 6 Fact, 7 Port, then 0 for upgrade stuff (dunno if that last part is Drewbie but it's what I've always done and fits with his setup anyway) But be warned changing hotkey setups is harder than fixing a problem like over-making SCVs.
Also saying it's a habit is a bad excuse. Believe in your own ability to overcome this and fix it.
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On February 21 2012 09:00 AeroEffect wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2012 08:51 Antylamon wrote:On February 21 2012 08:48 AeroEffect wrote: Trust me, I have tried to tel myself to just stop making workers but its a mindless thing. I dont even think about it, I just do it. I dont tell myself to make workers, its just and automatic thing.
It has gotten so bad, that I cant even all in correctly. I cant proxy 2-rax or no shit like that because I have the bad habit of making scv's by accident so instead of doing 11/11 and stopping workers at 12, ill do 11/11 and make like 4 more workers and wont have enough to make marines and eventually get supply blocked because of it. Then stop... You can't just give up on breaking a bad habit. Changing control groups won't help at all, it'll just confuse your muscle memory for a while, then you'll go back to spamming SCVs. Thats like telling telling a smoker of 30 years to stop. Its not that easy trust me, I've tried. I probably could slow it down or at least figure out how to stop it by checking saturation on my bases. I get over saturated quick on my nat because I want to be able to immediately transfer over my workers to my 3rd when I take it.
Unless you've been playing sc2 for 30 years, then it's not like telling a smoker of 30 years to stop. SC2 is not even a nacrotic. No, over-building scvs isn't a narcotic. It's like saying "omg I keep a-moving my army, not microing it, and dying, but I can't stop it since it's a habit, maybe it's a control group problem, my apm is 999 cuz I right click so fast."
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If you don't want to stop making scv's just pull some every once in a while to tank for your MMM. Crude yes but it helps a lil.
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On February 21 2012 08:28 AeroEffect wrote: I have a serious problem with my play that I would like help with.
I am a diamond terran player but I have been doing this since gold league and thats why its such a bad habit to break. I make wayyy to many scv's... even if I dont lose any I continue to make scv's even after losing a maxed army. Im not sure why, it just happens. and Im not talking about only making 60-80 scvs, Im talking anywhere between 90-120 each game that lasts more than 15 minutes. As soon as I hit 3 bases, my scv count goes through the roof. dont get me wrong now, my economy is great but, it causes me to lose ALOT.. especially vs toss maxed army.
To be honest, I believe the reason that I make so many scv's is because my hotkeys make it so easy to do so. I use grid and my control groups are set at:
1. All CCs, OCs, and PF,s 2. Barracks 3. Army 4. Factory (Vs. toss, ghosts and vikings) 5. Starports
People say spamming is bad but, I believe thats another reason why I make so many scv's. My apm according to SC2 Gears is usually between 250-260 with around 40% redundancy because im constantly spamming 1,2,4,5,3,1,2,4,5,3.... over and over.
Do you guys think that changing my control groups would help anything or is it a good thing that I overmake scv's since I still see pro's who forget to build scv's constantly?
As terran I have my control groups as
1 main army
2 harass (late game this becomes 2nd army or tanks)
3 air
4 production
5 cc
6 special production (ghosts)
Stop making scvs as terran just by looking at your mineral lines. Is it sat? Is it not sat?
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If you can't stop yourself from making SCV's even with solid effort you've probably just hit your skill cap. Unfortunate, but it happens to everyone. If you can improve your multi task you can get through it but that can be tough.
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as i've gotten better my raw apm has gone down about 30-40 and eapm has gone up about 5. and that's over the course of almost a year. it's going to take a lot of time to refine your actions as your patterns are habitual and unique to you as though a finger print.
for scv production, watch a whoooole bunch of your replays and figure out around when you hit that ~70 scv spot in relation to when you are taking your 3rd in different situations and then halt thereafter. as it has been stated, once you are on 3 bases, you can alternatively box each mineral line. 16-20 at each and enough to saturate your target number of geysers? cut that shit and once you can spam orbitals with excess mins you can begin to trade worker supply for army supply and abuse the hell out of mules
control groups are going to take a lot of time to change and then fully adapt to a new system. you're going to have to not give a shit about losing for quite some time if you want to get rid of your old habits and introduce new ones, so don't mind your ladder rating for a few weeks. the only way to really make a switch here is to use the new system in every game you play and NEVER even for a game revert back to the old system. one way you can condense two of your hotkeys is to put starports and rax on the same key and just tab for starport production. i wouldn't stack 3 different types of production on one key as that becomes action-inefficient.
this will free up that key so that you can have bio on one key and maybe vikings/ghosts/tanks or whatever on a key that you used to use and thus is very quick for you to think of and hit
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If you want to change sometime in your bahavior you need to consciously change it. The second you go on 'autopilot' again, you'll be overSCV'ing again.
The best option is to play games where this conscious part is present at all times. In order to reach that, you should start off by playing games that you don't mind losing. So start off vs GTAI. Play your normal game, but constantly remind yourself of the SCV stop at 3 bases. If you catch yourself overSCVing, quit the game and restart.
It may take a few games or many, depending on how ingrained this behavior is and how much conscious self-control you actually have but at some point you'll think while playing "ok this is that moment to stop SCV production".
I've rearranged my keyboard layout a few times now to optimize stuff and each time I had to relearn my hotkeys. But every time it actually went pretty quickly. I just played games consciously, not minding a loss, lack of scouting, etc. You can also play teamgames as those are less stressing.
Good luck!
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You need to periodically box select your mineral lines and make sure you have 16 workers mining.
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France12466 Posts
Use camera hotkeys for your expansions. That way you can mule whenever you want (the newest base preferably), and check scv saturation! Plus you have to remember that you don't need to make scv except 2 or 3 times (2 or 3 times * 3 orbital command I mean) when taking your third because depending of the timing you'll have already 50 to 60 scv. For checking your number of scv you have to box almost only the mineral line while watching at the bottom (but if you are already oversatured you just see it without the black box). Any scv over 70 is pointless for terran it's wasted supply, the best is around 65-70 but 60 can be sufficient if you are on 3 orbitals. If you have a PF as your third 70 would be better because you'll not have a lot of mules so perfect saturation is needed It's all about being able to check your saturation quickly, it helped me A LOT macroing to use camera hotkeys (I used to make too many workers too but now it's ok).
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I would really like to have this problem; as a Zerg I always stop building them too soon. If I watch replays of longer games where I am sure I made enough this time, I still end up between 50 and 60
As others suggested, box your mineral line and count them: minimum is 2 rows (16) and should not be more than 3 rows (24).
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Learn to box your bases to ensure optimal saturation (~18 scvs per base, bit less for main). Once you hit that, tell yourself to stop making scvs.
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personally (I play zerg) I can see just by looking at the "drone density" in a mineralline and conclude that "this is too many" or "this is too few" or "this is about right".
personally my problem with saturation is that depending on what I see my saturation to be, I keep thinking one of the following: "too many" : great! then I dont need to build workers for the rest of the game! (dies 15 minutes later becasue I ignored the harrass) "too few" : ALL MINERALS INTO WORKERS! (2 minutes later: I die due to lack of larvae) "about right" : if 2base: need another base, need another base, need another base... if 3base: great! then I dont need to build workers for the rest of the game! (dies later because overbuilds spinecrawlers)
but yea, there are 2 ways to go about it, (1) is better than (2), either:
1. check your worker count every now and then, when you reach the right amount, stop producing SCVs
2. stop producing SCVs when you get maxed you should have at least 2 or 3 bases worth of saturation when this happens, unless a lot of action happened early in the game.
as for "unlearning", well, you can't "unlearn" you can only "relearn" try using the 2rax pressure 10-20 games as your opening (where you cut SCVs), if you learn to stop at any one point, it should be fairly easy to recall that muscle memory at other places in the game.
disclaimer: since I play exclusively zerg I look at my mineralline periodically (because larvae inject), I have extremely little experience playing terran so periodically looking at the mineral lines might be more trouble than for zerg, I don't know.
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United Kingdom35817 Posts
On February 21 2012 11:08 PeanutsNJam wrote:Show nested quote +On February 21 2012 09:00 AeroEffect wrote:On February 21 2012 08:51 Antylamon wrote:On February 21 2012 08:48 AeroEffect wrote: Trust me, I have tried to tel myself to just stop making workers but its a mindless thing. I dont even think about it, I just do it. I dont tell myself to make workers, its just and automatic thing.
It has gotten so bad, that I cant even all in correctly. I cant proxy 2-rax or no shit like that because I have the bad habit of making scv's by accident so instead of doing 11/11 and stopping workers at 12, ill do 11/11 and make like 4 more workers and wont have enough to make marines and eventually get supply blocked because of it. Then stop... You can't just give up on breaking a bad habit. Changing control groups won't help at all, it'll just confuse your muscle memory for a while, then you'll go back to spamming SCVs. Thats like telling telling a smoker of 30 years to stop. Its not that easy trust me, I've tried. I probably could slow it down or at least figure out how to stop it by checking saturation on my bases. I get over saturated quick on my nat because I want to be able to immediately transfer over my workers to my 3rd when I take it. Unless you've been playing sc2 for 30 years, then it's not like telling a smoker of 30 years to stop. SC2 is not even a nacrotic. No, over-building scvs isn't a narcotic. It's like saying "omg I keep a-moving my army, not microing it, and dying, but I can't stop it since it's a habit, maybe it's a control group problem, my apm is 999 cuz I right click so fast."
Absolutely this. Basically get a grip. Box your SCVs, if you have as many as you need, stop making them. Yes, you can stop. Just make yourself. Ugh
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