What kind of goal to help you win do you have during the match? Like are you trying to force the opponent to make mistakes and then **** them for it, or are you just throwing out safe approaches and if it works, you kill them?
Sometimes I'm just not sure what I'm really supposed to be doing in a match before I hit them.
I've been told that I control space on the stage to the point that people feel that they are near or off the edge almost the entire match.
My spacing strategy is to put the opponent into my effective range, which is slightly further than tipper distance (call this Far Spacing), then when attacking, that effective range changes to try and keep the person at slightly less than tipper distance (Close Spacing).
Using the Far Spacing, your primary objective is to bait the opponent. My biggest tool for baiting is approaching the opponent until I am at the Far Spacing, then stopping. A still opponent is extremely indimidating, and will generally force the other person into action. From there, it's all about knowing how to punish (reaction). Throwing out safe moves, such as sh back and fair, is included in Far Spacing.
With Close Spacing, the primary objective changes to pressuring your opponent until they trap themselves in a few different ways. The first trap is shielding. If you start pushing your opponent and they shield, you have the advantage. You know their options are limited to either jumping out of shield into attack, shield grabbing, dodging, rolling. If they don't use one of these options, their shield will deteriorate and you will have attack advantage as you can easily shield stab or even shield break (nb) if their reaction speed fails them. When they shield, I usually do one of three things, dependent on my current spacing. If I am already aerial, I will choose to either float back into perfect fsmash tipper range, land and wait, or float forward, late fair their shield, then dash through. With good timing (near frame perfect), you can not be shield grabbed, and the opponent will likely try, leaving them at a huge frame disadvantage, and allowing you to punish them however you please. At high level play, it's rare that someone will just run straight and grab as that is why people spot dodge. Dash dance in to grab range to pressure the dodge, back out and then in for the grab.
If you get used to these two spacings, it also becomes much easier to tech chase pretty much anything.
I describe this game, and most fighting games for that matter, as having two main factors. The first is the push and pull game. This is that time when you are approaching and baiting your opponent, waiting for each other to mess up. The second is the punishment game. Low level players will only be able to really punish with individual hits, but at the highest levels, those little gaps that you create using the push and pull game lead into death combos.
The only other parts of smash that are different from most fighting games are the edgeguarding and recovery games, as they don't really fall under either of those catagories.
