About APM of some top players

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by Martenus, March 15, 2014.

  1. Martenus

    Martenus Well-Known Member

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    So in last couple days I have been observing some players from top of the ladder. Many people are sometimes amazed by their high APM. I can tell you, it is a complete missinterpretation of the skill. But on quite some serious level imo!

    Some common things I have noticed, that influence APM a lot:
    • They never use continuous build and always click their queue. They ussually do a mix of units and then shift click (with mod) couple hundred units. This adds quite a lot to your APM.
    • They manually queue the mex in the beginning and even later in the game. Compare those 5+ clicks to a click&drag area command, which is a single action.
    • They mostly always triple or more click for units to move to the same location. Doing this all the time can improve your APM significantly.
    • Same like mex, they tend to place energy by clicking. Some even don't spread it so there is really no point not to use a line command. (Some of course spread it quite a bit and that is understandable and desired).
    • Spam clicking. Everywhere and all the time! :D
    When doing this, your APM is often 150+ or even higher, 180+.

    Compared to a player with 80-100 steady APM, who doesn't do anything mentioned above, there is basically no difference. Trust me :)

    Their skill is mostly in very good map awareness, working very efficiently with their fabricators and spreading over the map quickly. Also they manage well their expansions and surround you nicely. These are the differences between you and them, not their APM.

    So don't be scared that your APM "sucks". It is just fine as long as it is above 80+ and is steady. Try to focus on other skills, don't try to improve your APM but your tactics.
  2. cdrkf

    cdrkf Post Master General

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    This has always been the case. I played allot of Spring competitively and regularly beat players with 3X the APM in the traditional sense, although Spring provides an additional statistic which is 'commands issued per minute' and mine were always comparable. I just don't like to waste time clicking unnecessarily.

    Interestingly, in APM terms a good player is often 150+ as you've said, however when you look at commands issued that same player is probably only issuing between 30 and 50 actual commands. As the PA UI improves (they have already implemented allot of the enhancements worked out in Spring, and a few of their own) then the APM will drop down closer to commands per minute (ideally the UI should allow the majority of important actions to be executed with no more than 2 clicks).
  3. matizpl

    matizpl Well-Known Member

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    APM is just a number. It might mean something but it might mean nothing. Usually it means a little bit but not much. APM is just number that shows how fast can be your fingers.
    This is very little because RTS game has much more elements than just speed of your fingers. I will not even mention strategies, build orders, scouting, overall intelligence. Often you might be fast with your fingers but you might waste this speed because:
    - You don't know UI well enough to make those clicks efficient
    - There is nothing to do
    - You don't have good enough brain muscle memory in order to execute all things that you want
    - You are not efficient enough with methods that you use to execute certain things.
    + what martenus said.
    And all these things apply to Starcraft 2. This is the game with ancient UI where you fight vs the game and not against your opponent. APM there is relatively important because of that. You basically cannot be a pro with 130 apm because of UI limitations. The number might be 300 or just 200 - your strategy and your race usually affects the apm needs. If you play defensively and with terran mech or protoss then it's much less apm intensive that Terran vs Zerg when you have to multitask and fight in 4 places and its madness.

    Now we have to take PA in consideration. I believe APM is much less important in PA.

    UI is by far more advanced in PA than in SC2. Here to produce 100 tanks you have to select your factories - you dont even need to hotkey them, you just zoom out and double click. Then you use shift and you make 5 tanks per factory which might be 50 if you have 10 factories. Even better, if you have mod you can make 100 tanks with just one shift click.
    In starcraft 2 to produce 50 marines you have to press motherfucking "A"(hotkey for marine) 50 times.
    Units also do not require much micro in PA and micro is usually quite apm demanding as well.
    PA is very hungry for effective actions though, because you have to make a couple of hundreds buildings during the game, we yet lack the ability to count EAPM which is by far more important number. You can spend 50 actions on building 20 factories but you might also spend 25 and be just as fine.

    I've met countless of players who were super focused on having big apm but their gameplay suffered from it. They were so focused on spam that it delayed the actions they were supposed to do. APM is the cherry on the cake, if you really know other things really well, you might consider trying to speed up, before you reach very high level it almost always doesnt mean much. Also you simply might not know what to do and this most likely slows you down the most.

    The core thing about APM that is often neglected yet I believe is very powerful is ego games. This allows you to influence psychology of your opponent. If he is playing vs you and sees the number is 100 higher it most of the times affects his gameplay. The key in competitive games is to stay 100% focused on the game. If i manage to distract you with any kind of thoughts like stress or apm thing or whatever - I already have big upperhand. It also boosts your own confidence. Confidence is often overlooked, but I'm very sure it's one of the most important things in tournaments. The thing is that in RTS games there is no simple way to tell who is better player. There is tons of factors that matter. If you do weightlifting you can just say i bench more than you, case is closed. In RTS it doesn't work like this, tournaments might not matter because of bracket luck, ladder might not matter because of certain playstyle. APM is something that gives people false measurement of skill. Don't get trapped by this.
    I think the best number to really measure someone's skill in Planetary Annihilation is how much energy and metal you mined and how much you wasted at certain point in the game. It is influenced also by a lot of things but in PA i feel like economy is tons more important than fast fingers. Such numbers still lack to catch someones real skill but they are for sure closer than APM.

    To sum up. The biggest difference between pros and no pros is hands down economy management. Learn how to improve your economy in optimal way. And learn as much hotkeys as possible - this is the only 100% efficient way to improve your real speed.
    Last edited: March 15, 2014
  4. Martenus

    Martenus Well-Known Member

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  5. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    Worrying about APM is putting the cart before the horse. Higher APM comes about as you get better, you don't become better owing to your APM.
    stuart98 and Murcanic like this.
  6. brianpurkiss

    brianpurkiss Post Master General

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    There is definitely an APM ceiling. Anything beyond that 80ish ceiling is pretty pointless.

    Great points martenus.
  7. OathAlliance

    OathAlliance Well-Known Member

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    Remember that Uber said you would probably have a High APM. Not because of Micro, but because of managing lots of things over 2-3 worlds.

    So it'll be Micro-Macro APM vs. Micro APM
  8. kalherine

    kalherine Active Member

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    I never lost a game ,and this week i win to the call top players.
    Like i told them you guys must play a bit FA to understand wy we love multitask and wy i call this game very easy to play....
    Dont try to find a Katherine since im using a name that many already now there.....

    So no one showld be scar,just imagine the actions before you make them...
  9. tehtrekd

    tehtrekd Post Master General

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  10. tatsujb

    tatsujb Post Master General

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    O...or they're from the starcraft gaming scene and they kept their habits.

    even using those gui elements they could be switching between saved cameras and microing bots at the same insane rate.

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