1v1 improving guidelines

[Mad`Mozart]

Giving occasional lessons to people i noticed a few things i always explain, so i tried to put together all the general advice that anyone could use ranging from ~1000 to 1700 (and probably more?) rating.

Nevertheless, you wont learn anything from any kind of advice unless you start putting effort into it. The point of this thread is to give people guidelines on what to focus on in their games to start improving. Basically, a list of mistakes every lower rated player does - and with starting to get rid of those hopefully you will become a better player.

And now, lets keep it short



1. Your first and utmost goal is to get your half of the map. That is the very basic thing and if you cant get a hold of mexes and reclaim on your side - you effectively just cant compete with your opponent. Learn the map, learn the ways to take and defend your expansions. Otherwise no map control, no eco, no units, no victory.

2. Eco efficiency. Very crucial and unforgiving early game, a bit less but still important later. Learn BOs from top players or make yours. Your goal is to spend your eco as effective as you can with no stall or (minimum) floating resources. The later in the game you can maintain (near) perfect eco balance, the better player you are.

3. Other efficiency. First, learn why BOs work for top players and what they get from them. Better start, better ending. Usually its utilizing nearby reclaim and mass/hydro points to make as much factories and as early as possible. Which leads to faster getting units on the field to raid and deny map control from your opponent.

4. T2/T3 transition. Generally the best time to make one is when you are already going steady with your map control and have enough units on field to play with. If you dont, go back to previous points and work on those Dont try to rush higher tech units (there are always exceptions though, but remember this is just general advice), first make sure you have enough production to hold your side of the map. And on the contrary, dont overbuild and sit on lower tech tier too much. Only reason to do so is below.

5. When to eco up? Same as before, first condition to meet is maintaining map control. Second condition is making sure your opponent cant do substantial damage with the units he has. Still cant kill your army and break through? Ecowhore some more

6. Fighting and raiding. Make use of your BO to get those first units as fast as you can killing enemy engies and mexes. You should remember though that raiding becomes less efficient the longer the game goes. If during first minutes sacrifing your raiding groups for denying expansions is worth it, later the unit cost will outweight the losses. Losing 20+ t1 tanks for killing 4 t1 mexes is a bad idea. Losing a bunch of t2 tanks for same t1 mexes is disgustingly terrible idea. Never send your units to mindlessly attack enemy positions. If you see you cant break through and deal some real damage - dont send your units in the first place. Eco up, tech up, and look for another way you can deal the damage.

[Mad`Mozart]

Any questions, comments and critisicm?

[Greenio]

Well, this seems pretty obvious... maybe it would be more interesting if you could share how achieve these? e.g. make a tutorial
on how to eco efficiently, how to quickly tell if you have time to tech up on (5x5 , 10x10) et cetera. I mean, i'm a 1200 ish ladder
rating noob and i always play by these rules, but im not applying them as efficiently as the higher rated players do, I'd just like it
if you could give us noobs some insight into how a pro achieves these goals.

I don't want to come across as rude i like your post, maybe you can get into it deeper?

[keyser]

7. You gonna want to use your unit. You can use them with raiding (in early game) and defend raiding. Then when the game become more static, you gonna want to drop your unit. Avoid static def, and try to deal as much damage as possible by bringing your unit to the important/weak point of your opponent (ressources production...)

8. Fighting : At the T1 stage you gonna want to mix up some scout into your army to make them efficient. But at a later stage (T2 for exemple), you might lack of those scout. If you want to attack, you gonna need to make some radar at front, so that your radar coverage allow you to use your unit at their maximum potential, and not be surprise by an army bigger than yours.

9. When you have 30-40+ unit, you gonna have to take the best engagement. If you send all your army in 1 group, only the first unit, will shoot while the other at back won't. So you have to make multiple side attack, or prepare a concave for defense.

[Mad`Mozart]

Well, this seems pretty obvious... maybe it would be more interesting if you could share how achieve these? e.g. make a tutorial
on how to eco efficiently, how to quickly tell if you have time to tech up on (5x5 , 10x10) et cetera. I mean, i'm a 1200 ish ladder
rating noob and i always play by these rules, but im not applying them as efficiently as the higher rated players do, I'd just like it
if you could give us noobs some insight into how a pro achieves these goals.

I don't want to come across as rude i like your post, maybe you can get into it deeper?

Yeah, good point that i kinda miss my point in the thread Ninja edited the post.

And indeed, all those thing are quite obvious if you think about it - but do you actually think about all this stuff in game? A lot of players does not, mainly cause they just dont have enough time to think. And if anything, i see this guide as motivational to refer back to every time you lost a game and not sure why - short and strict to the point, where you can get an idea what you did wrong in a game by just reading it.

As to giving insight on how to do how to achieve those goals... well, i already gave. I cant really teach you how to play better, can only give advice and you teach yourself following it Its all a matter of one's personal experience.

Also cant go deeper with this guide, as its only a gathering of general rules. All these little details vary from player to player and from map to map. What you do, when and how - i can tell most of this stuff in replay analysys but not here. Just waaaaaaay too much info to cover for all the different situations, maps and playstyles. Will end up in massive theorycrafting with tons of if and whens - not really useful in my opinion.

[speed2]

Wiki needs General 1v1 Guide
http://wiki.faforever.com/index.php?tit ... ing_SupCom
Since we moved already all the existing tutorials there, this one should go as well. On wiki other people can contribute to it as well and make it the best guide.

[theeggroll]

I'd include in the teching part about reactionary tech. As im sure you know you almost never want to be at a tech disadvantage and blah blah blah

[Aurion]

I'd include in the teching part about reactionary tech. As im sure you know you almost never want to be at a tech disadvantage and blah blah blah

Is implicitly covered though (when you can no longer do damage -> your opponent teched), but yes, would be good to add I think.

[Mad`Mozart]

just shamelessly bumping here

[Lieutenant Lich]

Where can I find my replays? Because I have a couple of 1v1 games that perfectly demonstrate what Mozart is trying to say.