Starcraft Statistics

Another Starcraft Blog (and probably my nerdiest post ever!!)

I found this really cool tool to track your Starcraft Statistics called SC2Gears (or at least I think it's cool). I've been having it save my replays for the past several months and now I have a decent size number of replays (about 130) to do some analysis on.

My first question is whether or not my APM has increased over this span of time. APM stands for actions per minute, and as the name implies it counts each of the actions you make (every key you type, every mouse button you click) during the length of the game and divides it by the number of game minutes. Pro Starcraft 2 players consistently have APMs in the mid to upper 200s (meaning they literally make over 4 actions every game second--and a game second is less even slightly less time than a real second!). Here is my graph:



Based on the regression line, it looks like I have improved only very slightly (about 5 APM over the course of the 3 months). At least I didn't go down in APM.

Next, I decided to see how I'm doing when playing against each of the races. In case you didn't know Starcraft is a real time strategy game that consists of three intergalactic races--the Terran (exiled humans from earth--the race I play), the Protoss (a technically advanced alien species) and the Zerg (A bug like alien).

I suspected that I do worse against zerg and better against protoss, which was what I found.



This makes sense. I have a generally strong build order against Protoss and I am better at controlling the army composition that favors this match up (mostly bio play if you're familiar).

I thought that maybe my APM is higher against Protoss and so I checked that out:



Interestingly my highest APM(though it's pretty close)is against Zerg. Though this could also be a function of game length. Usually games against Zerg last longer, and since you do less in the very early portion of the game, it makes sense that the longer a game goes, the higher your average actions per minute would be. I'll have to do more analysis on this.

Lastly, I wanted to see how long the games I played were as well as how my APM is relative to my opponent:




I was surprised at how slow I am relative to the people I'm stacked up against. On average they are about 25% faster than I am. When you play online you are matched up against who it thinks you'll be most comparable to. This just makes me realize that my biggest shortfall is my speed. In order to be competing (and winning nearly 50% of games I play) with people 25% faster than I am, I must be doing ok in the other aspects of the game (at this level), namely in game decision making and overall strategy. Now I need to figure out ways to improve my speed, or maybe I can play this game with no APM.