Floating Resources

Floating refers to when the player has accumulated a large amount of resources that are unspent.

Content purchased - such as units, abilities, researches, add-ons, structures, weapons - can provide a benefit which when used shift the balance of power. Money unspent is unused, and therefore every second of no use can be considered lost opportunities to get an advantage on the enemy. Lost opportunities means lost tempo, which is to say that you're losing the ability to gain a time advantage on the enemy. Further, floating resources at the wrong time can cause a game end or game throw, because you lack vital content essential for a key battle which may be decisive.

Tempo & opportunity cost
In a certain sense, reinforcing a unit (or buying a special weapon or research etc) provides a tempo advantage when compared against saving up for a vehicle. This is because the cost of the vehicle is not just its requisition/power/population cost, but also the opportunity cost of not being able to use it right away to kill the enemy.

Reinforcement, special weapons, researches, tend to arrive within 10-20 seconds in-combat, and there are therefore often immediately useful. A vehicle's total time cost is the:
 * Time to save up the resources to build it
 * Time to build a vehicle bay, if that's not already in play
 * Time to build the actual unit, which may take between 30-90 seconds (depending on the unit)
 * Time to move the unit into a battle, which is a factor of distance and speed

This also assumes the vehicle is not idling, which is another time cost. Typically reinforcement happens shortly before the fight, and therefore has a lowered idling time cost.

Improving as an RTS player
Generally speaking, one of the fastest ways to improve as an RTS player is to stop floating . This becomes a matter of:


 * Knowing how to spend your resources
 * Knowing how to gain resources
 * Knowing when to spend your resources

The impact of floating also differs between games. This is a factor of:


 * The average and range of costs of units. Lower cost units punish floating more, as you could have bought them earlier (in a more timely manner)
 * The average time it takes to bring a unit into combat (or the enemy base). The shorter this window, the more it is punishing to be floating.
 * How quickly units destroy each other, because that encourages rapid replacement.

Floating is not always bad, however
It is misleading to think that all 'floating' is bad. Floating is necessary to buy more expensive units, but this is controlled floating. Managed floating has a purpose, and is therefore not strictly inefficient; there is an objective behind it that makes it a viable move.

For SC2 here are some unit costsPerhaps in the far future these figures will be out of date, but it does not matter however as its only for simple comparison: I picked Protos only because I expect the unit costs to average higher than for the other races. Let's also forget for a moment that the rate of resource gain differs between the games, because it complicates the example.

Most new squads in dowpro cost 200/0 or perhaps 250/100, and thereabouts. Rarely is it below 150, except for certain specific units. One of the most expensive Dowpro units is the Bloodthirster (600/750). In dowpro, this takes quite a bit of saving even in the mid/late game. This creates a tempo vulnerability, as the Chaos player can be punished by the enemy for halting production. This encourages players to frequently attack, in order to prevent the opposition from having the space to save up such uber units. You could say that the lower cost of units makes SC2 more punishing when it comes to floating. On the other hand, the objective-focused map control in Dawn of War means that military purchases can be considered a source of income, which serves to increase the opportunity cost for floating resources.

Game mechanics such as reinforcement and special weapons serve to make the game more punishing for those who engage in floating, because threats can be brought to the field quickly and persistently. Losing squads can mean a sudden loss in tempo, which may cause you to float more or purchase units that lack the tempo of aggressive reinforcement.