APM: spend your clicks where they count

Lesson

10 of 14

Watch

A written lesson, no video

Practise

A checkpoint and a plan for your next game

Your actions per minute are not a score. They are a budget, and most of it is spent before you make a single interesting decision. After this lesson you will know how much of your APM is already owed, where your free actions are, and how to spend them so that your opponent's budget runs out before yours.

What you will learn

• The three kinds of action: the ones you must take, the ones you choose to take, and the extras.
• How to estimate what your hands already owe at any point in a game, with real numbers.
• Why your free attention shrinks as the game goes on, and what that means for when you act.
• Why harassment is worth far more than the damage it does.
• Three habits that give you more free actions without getting any faster.

Three kinds of action

Sort every click you make into one of three piles.

The key word is compulsory. You cannot decide not to make workers. You can only decide to make them late, and late workers mean less money for the rest of the game.

What your hands already owe

Here is the compulsory load for a player on three bases with six production buildings, a few minutes into the midgame. These are the same rough figures the APM Lab uses, so you can change any of them and see what happens.

Now the optional work you would like to do in the same minute:

That is 122 actions a minute to do everything. Put your own number against it.

• At 150, you can do it all, with some room for extras.
• At 120, you are just short. Something optional has to go.
• At 90, you have 24 spare after the compulsory work. You can scout, or micro, or harass, but not all three.
• At 60, you cannot even cover the compulsory load. Your workers and production are quietly falling behind, and that is why you are losing.

Most players never run out of APM. They run out of attention and stop making workers. The number that matters is the last one on the list that you did not get to.

Your free time shrinks

Every new base adds about 6 compulsory actions a minute. Every new production building adds about 4. Your ceiling does not rise during a game, so the free band gets thinner every time you grow. Two things follow.

Free attention is a wasting asset. The 40 spare actions you have early will be 10 later. Anything you plan to do with free attention, like a harass, a proxy or a scout, do it sooner.

More production costs attention, not just minerals. A seventh gateway is 150 minerals and about 4 actions a minute for the rest of the game. If you are already at your ceiling it adds nothing, because you cannot keep it busy. An expansion or an upgrade is usually the better buy.

The load is also lumpy. Sometimes three buildings finish, supply runs out and a fight starts in the same five seconds. Other times everything is building and nothing needs you. Learn to spot the quiet moments. They are where your optional actions come from.

The trade that wins games

Here is the most useful idea in this lesson. Spend your free actions on something the other player cannot ignore.

A few fast units in their mineral line cost you maybe 10 actions a minute. For them it is not optional. It comes out of their compulsory budget: they stop producing, pull units back, build defence they did not plan. Call it 25 of their actions, and everything downstream of those actions is late.

You spent actions you had lying around. They paid from an account that was already empty. You also chose the moment, so you can pick one that is quiet for you and busy for them, like just as their army moves out. The dead workers are a bonus. The purchase was the delay.

The same trade works against you, which is the part to guard against. Every time you answer a harass with your whole attention, you hand them the trade. The cheapest defence costs you nothing on each visit: a unit parked in the mineral line, a turret or cannon, a building placed so nothing can walk in. If you know a drop is coming, spend quiet time early on static defence or mines. When it arrives it costs you almost no clicks at all.

What makes a good harass unit

• Speed first. A fast unit leaves before the defence arrives, so the same units can threaten several places, so the defender must guard all of them. Vultures and zerglings are the classic examples.
• Flying second. For the same reason, with no paths to block. Mutalisks, and anything carried by a dropship or shuttle.
• Everything else is a bonus. Damage, splash and cloaking make the harass hurt more. Speed is what makes the trade.

A small force split in two is often worth more than the same force together. Two threats force two responses, and the defender has to pay for both.

Three habits that give you free actions

Overlap. Give an order, then use the travel time. Send the shuttle, and while it flies, make workers. Send the army across the map, and while it walks, spend your money. Moving the screen away from a unit feels like abandoning it. Really you are noticing it does not need you for three seconds. Three seconds, twenty times a game, is a minute of attention you did not have to get faster to earn.

Prepay. Spend quiet moments on things that save clicks later: turrets before the drop, a wall before the runby, supply ahead of time rather than in a panic.

Batch the routine. Do your macro in one sweep: workers, production, supply, back to the army. One trip home costs less than five scattered ones.

Common mistakes

• Treating APM as a score. A high number spent on spam buys nothing. Count what the actions did.
• Adding production you cannot keep busy. More buildings raise your compulsory load. If they sit idle, you paid twice.
• Watching your harass. If you send a drop and then stare at it, you pay full attention for a small return. Give the order and go home.
• Answering every harass with everything. A few zerglings in your mineral line are not worth your whole army and a minute of no production.
• Saving free time for later. Later there is less of it.

Practise

1. Count your load. Pause one of your replays eight minutes in. List everything you were obliged to do and estimate the actions a minute. Compare it with your APM at that point.
2. Find your quiet moments. In the same replay, find three five second stretches where nothing compulsory was due. What did you do with each?
3. Make the trade. Play a game where you send a small fast force into their economy at a moment you choose. Write down how long their production stopped.
4. Prepay. Play a game where you put static defence at the base you expect to be harassed before it happens. Did you click less when it came?
5. Overlap on purpose. For one game, every time you give a travelling unit an order, move the screen home and spend money. Count how often you managed it.
6. Use the lab. In the APM budget lab, put in your own APM, bases and production, and see what goes unattended first.

Checkpoint