[OxygeN]

“OMG. I have 1000 minerals and 400 gas! What should I do, what should I do? Damn, I shall build 3 more barracks / Gateways and expand! Or for the lesser skilled players, I shall queue up 5 units! Ahh, now I have no minerals left, I’m a happy panda ^^”

I’m pretty sure, everybody have experienced this at one time or another throughout the many games that they have been playing. It happens to everyone really. Even the pros. Today, my article will discuss the ambiguous topic of resource management.

The fundamentals of Starcraft were built upon minerals, and gas was a more sacred, valuable resource. Basic units such as the Marine, Zealot, and Zergling only needed minerals to produce, whilst gas was needed for higher tier-ed units. I’m sure everybody already knew that, so let me carry on to my main points.

Are too much resources always a bad thing? Is it possible to intentionally stack resources? Today I will be discussing the simpler details to playing better, how to use your resources better, and also the concept of stacking resources for a later purpose.

Yes, too much resources are always a bad thing, if you had wanted to spend it but didn’t have the chance to. At the end of the battle, or some micro-ing, if you find yourself placing down 3 barracks at one go, its very likely to be a bad thing, unless you had wanted to save the mineral harvesting time of your workers, and carve out a timing barracks push.

So how then, do you ensure you spend all of your resources consistently? Simply put, build workers, hot-key production structures, and build when there is a 1 second “window” when you don’t have to micro your units. That being said, it is very hard to build structures and the such whilst microing, that is when the concept of opportunity cost comes in.

Would you move your army back to macro, but risk losing the aggressive advantage you possess and potentially letting him get 2 more units that’ll make your push deal less damage than it would have done if you didn’t macro? Or will the macro give you a bigger long term advantage. That is for you to decide on the spur of the moment, and it only does not come from 1000 hours of theorycrafting, it comes from experience.

I am a big victim of the micro over macro mindset, as I love to deal damage rather than build units. Thus in many of my games, my resource stockpile is always found wanting. However, as I played more and more, I realized there is actually a 2-3 second window, while microing that you can actually stop microing and not lose the economical advantage!

For example, I am kiting zealots and stalkers with 6 marauders, I am controlling madly, I move my marauders back press a-click, and while it is shooting I build SCVs and more units. Instantly I control my units again, and move them back, rise and repeat. Once you see them backing, if they do, that is my timing window right there to hit in some macro.

Next, I would like to discuss the topic of intentionally stacking resources. We all have done it before. Saving 300 minerals 200 gas to immediately get a thor when available, 600 minerals 600 gas to pump out 6 mutas on completion of the spire. Sounds easy, but because those are early game stacking, which is basically strategy which requires zero transition.

What I am looking at then is the mid-game, whilst using a 4 gate army, to suddenly transit into something else, quickly hitting critical mass without the opponent having sufficient time to muster out a counter.

How is it done? It typically involves a huge army, say 130-140 food, and you having 2 expansions. You push with your army intentionally, revealing your full-range of unit mix, while prior to your push you are stacking up a lot of resources. Once your push moves out, transit to something HUGE. It could be BCs, Carriers, Collosus, Broodlords, whatever. Something BIG, and Tiered-3.

This is when your army dies, the opponent thinks, okay he is getting this unit mix of t1-2 units, so I’ll continue what I’m getting. A quick example would be MMMG tanks mix vs a protoss gateway army. He rapes the nuts out of your army with chargelots, and knows that his mix works, so he continues building those, without the thought of a transition in his mind.

But if you were intending for a huge transition and was building starports, all you have to do was pump out BCs from 4 ports, produce 2 cycles, attack, and win. Given there are a lot of other factors that would involve you winning or losing, like your army died without killing too much so your base is gone, the opponent scouts your tech switch and tech switches with you etc. The idea here is if you manage to catch your opponent off guard with something big, and many, you win.

Cheers, if you have read till this far, and have a great day ahead!

1hour 15minutes to knock-off!
TGIF. TGIF. TGIF!!!!