BANANAMAN
Resident Star Battle Expert.
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For those following the Starcraft 2 news there's a new replay feature that records how many actions per minute you can execute. This article is to help clear up a few misconceptions about APM. Since the original starcraft is still a intense fast paced game it stands to say that Starcraft 2 won't be any different.With Koreans setting the bar once again you'll have to adapt to the pace.Ultimately it will be up to you to decide whether you should follow my advice or not. If you want to continually suck and be stuck with the jerks that can't even pass the practice league or you can with enough experience can start taking on South Koreans.
"But Apm is meaningless!! It's all about strategy,Build Orders and tactics!!"
"I've beaten someone with a 240+ apm and my apm barely exceded 30!"
"I can out micro anyone with only 40 apm"
"I have imba 400 apm. NO ONE CAN STOP ME LULZ!!
These are just one of the few statements I've encountered in forums either about Starcraft 2,Broodwar and sometimes general RTS forums.
But what really is APM? is it a meaningless bunch of gibberish? Is it the sole deciding factor of how good the player is? Do you really need that much APM? No,Not really,It depends.
Let me elaborate.
Actions per minute or APM is the amount of actions you can do in a single minute in a given game. Generally APM includes all actions within a game such as clicking,ordering unit movement,Mining,Building,etc. However people have misjudged this as a way to show how awesome they are by tricking programs such as Bw Chart that they have more apm that they really do giving them there real apm+ all the bad apm or Null actions as BW chart calls it. Null actions are actions that do not have a direct result within the game such as clicking at random points without any good reason,trying to build a unit without sufficient resources,etc. Valid Actions per minute or "Good apm" is the average value of your Apm throughout the whole game which is total of all actions,minus the null actions,divided by the game duration.
Now Valid apm is divided into two elements,Macro and micro.
Macro is for a lack of a better explanation is Economy based while micro is unit based actions such as ordering your unit to move,cast spells,Etc. Both of which are interrelated to each other like Yin and yang. You can't win a game soley on micro nor can you win a game soley on macro.
Ah so Valid Apm is just how fast you can play right?
Wrong. While Valid Apm is exactly how fast you can play it's what you do with those actions that counts.You can still win with 50 apm against a player that does 500 meaningless apm
For example:
As a zerg player your required to maintain pressure on the enemy (Let's use terran as an example).Micro managing Mutalisks to attack mining SCV's is one method of harrasment.
So you have your mutalisks,You're sucessful in your harras by killing off a majority of his SCV's before retreating from his superior marine count of thirty plus marines.Now you think to yourself,"Now that I've killed his worker production i can move on and macro my way towards victory" Yes while that is the general thing to do at a situation like this bear in mind that if your opponent doesn't feel the pressure anymore and he has a higher amount of Vapm he'll move out with the marines and medics and possibly aim to take out an expansion at the same time still pumping out units as much as he can while your sitting at your base thinking about what unit to get,what upgrades to get,etc.
A good strategy is to try and cripple as much of his mining capacity as possible while at the same time producing your units and upgrading your tech tree.Keeping up the pressure forces his attention more towards your mutalisks and less towards unit production.
Another example is this.
You've begun engaging the Terran army which is irradiating your lurkers and defilers while at the same time is using it's marines and siege tanks to kill off the rest of your units.You have scourge and mutalisks present and a decent amount of income.Microing your units while producing more units vastly helps with pushing the terran offensive back by separately microing your scourge to hit a science vessel 2 at a time instantly killing it along with casting plague,Darkswarm,consuming zerglings,declumping your units,ordering your Mutalisks to snipe marines,etc while your continuing researches and upgrades and expanding as best as you can.All of these should happen under the span of 3-6 minutes depending how fast you are.
All those examples above would require an ability to be able to be simoultaniously thinking about strategies while at the sametime executing them and at the same time keeping up unit production to support your army! Thus Vapm is used to gauge how fast a player can preform all those types of actions during the whole game. A low amount of Vapm would mean that should you attack your opponent he'll have to choose which action he'll have to preform either to save the expansion by microing defending units,Attack the enemy's main base/outposts,while managing his economy,etc since he can't preform all actions simultaneously. On the other hand a person with a high amount of Vapm can preform all those actions simultaneously.
With Starcraft 2 there are many new players mixing it up with several veterans from broodwar. VApm of course is the trait that separate the newbies from the veterans. And the veterans from the posers. So the next time someone says "I have a high apm dude you can't beat me." don't be afraid! Chances are he is just bluffing and there apm is lower than what he wants you to believe.
Apm is literally the amount of actions you can do per minute in the game. The difference between a good player and a poser is the poser uses those actions just to show off when he could be using those to do something else.
Your a fool to think of neglecting Vapm when trying to improve your game.Vapm is just as important as tactics since you'll need it to execute your tactics faster than the other player can.
One note:Vapm is a factor used by coaches to figure out what to improve in a player's method of play. If he has sound strategies but can't execute them in time he then needs to work on his apm,When he can preform his strategies simoultaniously but they suck then he needs to work on his tactics. This would vary from game to game. Such as the amount of Apm you would need to survive in broodwar is different in Warcraft.
"But Apm is meaningless!! It's all about strategy,Build Orders and tactics!!"
"I've beaten someone with a 240+ apm and my apm barely exceded 30!"
"I can out micro anyone with only 40 apm"
"I have imba 400 apm. NO ONE CAN STOP ME LULZ!!
These are just one of the few statements I've encountered in forums either about Starcraft 2,Broodwar and sometimes general RTS forums.
But what really is APM? is it a meaningless bunch of gibberish? Is it the sole deciding factor of how good the player is? Do you really need that much APM? No,Not really,It depends.
Let me elaborate.
Actions per minute or APM is the amount of actions you can do in a single minute in a given game. Generally APM includes all actions within a game such as clicking,ordering unit movement,Mining,Building,etc. However people have misjudged this as a way to show how awesome they are by tricking programs such as Bw Chart that they have more apm that they really do giving them there real apm+ all the bad apm or Null actions as BW chart calls it. Null actions are actions that do not have a direct result within the game such as clicking at random points without any good reason,trying to build a unit without sufficient resources,etc. Valid Actions per minute or "Good apm" is the average value of your Apm throughout the whole game which is total of all actions,minus the null actions,divided by the game duration.
Now Valid apm is divided into two elements,Macro and micro.
Macro is for a lack of a better explanation is Economy based while micro is unit based actions such as ordering your unit to move,cast spells,Etc. Both of which are interrelated to each other like Yin and yang. You can't win a game soley on micro nor can you win a game soley on macro.
Ah so Valid Apm is just how fast you can play right?
Wrong. While Valid Apm is exactly how fast you can play it's what you do with those actions that counts.You can still win with 50 apm against a player that does 500 meaningless apm
For example:
As a zerg player your required to maintain pressure on the enemy (Let's use terran as an example).Micro managing Mutalisks to attack mining SCV's is one method of harrasment.
So you have your mutalisks,You're sucessful in your harras by killing off a majority of his SCV's before retreating from his superior marine count of thirty plus marines.Now you think to yourself,"Now that I've killed his worker production i can move on and macro my way towards victory" Yes while that is the general thing to do at a situation like this bear in mind that if your opponent doesn't feel the pressure anymore and he has a higher amount of Vapm he'll move out with the marines and medics and possibly aim to take out an expansion at the same time still pumping out units as much as he can while your sitting at your base thinking about what unit to get,what upgrades to get,etc.
A good strategy is to try and cripple as much of his mining capacity as possible while at the same time producing your units and upgrading your tech tree.Keeping up the pressure forces his attention more towards your mutalisks and less towards unit production.
Another example is this.
You've begun engaging the Terran army which is irradiating your lurkers and defilers while at the same time is using it's marines and siege tanks to kill off the rest of your units.You have scourge and mutalisks present and a decent amount of income.Microing your units while producing more units vastly helps with pushing the terran offensive back by separately microing your scourge to hit a science vessel 2 at a time instantly killing it along with casting plague,Darkswarm,consuming zerglings,declumping your units,ordering your Mutalisks to snipe marines,etc while your continuing researches and upgrades and expanding as best as you can.All of these should happen under the span of 3-6 minutes depending how fast you are.
All those examples above would require an ability to be able to be simoultaniously thinking about strategies while at the sametime executing them and at the same time keeping up unit production to support your army! Thus Vapm is used to gauge how fast a player can preform all those types of actions during the whole game. A low amount of Vapm would mean that should you attack your opponent he'll have to choose which action he'll have to preform either to save the expansion by microing defending units,Attack the enemy's main base/outposts,while managing his economy,etc since he can't preform all actions simultaneously. On the other hand a person with a high amount of Vapm can preform all those actions simultaneously.
With Starcraft 2 there are many new players mixing it up with several veterans from broodwar. VApm of course is the trait that separate the newbies from the veterans. And the veterans from the posers. So the next time someone says "I have a high apm dude you can't beat me." don't be afraid! Chances are he is just bluffing and there apm is lower than what he wants you to believe.
Apm is literally the amount of actions you can do per minute in the game. The difference between a good player and a poser is the poser uses those actions just to show off when he could be using those to do something else.
Your a fool to think of neglecting Vapm when trying to improve your game.Vapm is just as important as tactics since you'll need it to execute your tactics faster than the other player can.
One note:Vapm is a factor used by coaches to figure out what to improve in a player's method of play. If he has sound strategies but can't execute them in time he then needs to work on his apm,When he can preform his strategies simoultaniously but they suck then he needs to work on his tactics. This would vary from game to game. Such as the amount of Apm you would need to survive in broodwar is different in Warcraft.
