What is the optimal Marine stutter step frequency and timing?
Solution 1:
Marines have an attack cooldown of 0.8608 seconds, (-0.28693 while stimmed).
Note that you should be stutter stepping with right click and the Stop of Hold Position hotkey. There will be a small lag-dependent delay between pressing S or H and your Marines opening fire, which you will have to experiment to find for yourself. You can right click to move as soon as the attack animation starts, as Marines deal damage instantaneously.
Perfect stutter step micro consists of pressing S or H every 0.8608 seconds (or 0.57387 seconds stimmed), and right clicking as soon as your Marines open fire.
EDIT: If you attack move while the Marines are on cooldown, the Marines in range of an enemy will not move.
Solution 2:
Here is what I found (thanks to Ampersand for the hint)
- base Attack speed = 0.8608 seconds
- while stimmed = 0.57387
- game speed factor is about 1.4X
- random delay between attacks (all units): between 0.125 and - 0.0625
Considering the worst case with the longest random delay but not considering turning speed this leaves us at:
- worst case unstimmed = 0.8608 + 0.125 = 0.9858
- worst case stimmed = 0.57387 + 0.125 = 0.69887
- considering game speed factor 1.4
- worst case unstimmed ingame = 0.9858 / 1.4 = 0.7041
- worst case stimmed ingame = 0.69887 / 1.4 = 0.4992
Calculating hits per minute would be:
- worst case unstimmed per minute = 60 / 0.7041 = 85.21
- worst case stimmed per minute = 60 / 0.4992 = 120.19
I checked also for the stutter step method, there are 4 and each depends on preferences:
- stop
- hold position
- attack move
- patrol
Depending on which you use this would translate into the following APM:
- stop, hold position: 2 * 85 = 170 APM and 2 * 120 = 240 APM
- patrol, attack move: 3 * 85 = 255 APM and 3 * 120 = 360 APM
In any case there is a small delay you have to wait until you move after you fire. I could not find any reliable value for this time, you just need to "wait" until the marine fires.
Here are the sources I used:
- http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=291654
- http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=219637