somebody was asking about what "spacing" is and I just wrote this and I'm going to paste this here. you really, really need to play real people. practicing techskill alone is fine but I suggest you don't practice much vs the CPU or if you do you practice doing specific things and don't transfer your habits over to real game play (but you will, everyone does, if you spend more time nair'ing at CPUs than playing people. up until you at least understand this post I'm about to paste)
practice what you can but you're going to see that is stuff is what's going to be able to allow you to compete with people and improve. techskill is only like 1/3rd of this game. But all that being said, being able to hit firefox angles, ledge dash, shine grab (really good), shorten your illusion (you only need to be able to get a decent length consistently, don't worry about being able to hit all of them that's way too hard lol), and even shield dropping are hella good and practical. But I'd say the most important fox tech to get down in the beginning is double lasers (that don't hurt/strain you lol), consistent L canceling and fast falling on SH aerials (this is nontrivial), waveshines. and being able to get off the ledge well.
spacing is very, very, very different from hitting max distance aerials and normals
spacing is something complicated you're going to have to figure out through playing people (preferably better than you). basically,
"spacing" is denying your opponent a space or an option through positioning + placement. more often than not you shouldn't be aiming your attacks at where your opponent is currently standing. it's more like aiming your attacks safely at an option you think your opponent would like to pick and it kind of ties into being able to read + having an understanding of the limitations of characters.
if you're not punishing someone you don't place your moves to hit exactly, you place them in a safe place that also puts you in an advantageous spot
(i.e. if I SH nair in place as falcon and they run into to me I win. If they don't I'm safe if I placed the nair far away enough to not easily be punished but close enough to also be threatening/maintain a threat/actually stop them from doing something [like running towards me/center stage] even though I never intended on committing to hit them per say. in this basic situation, I placed my move in such a way that if it goes in my favor, it was free. If it does not, I really lost nothing. And then conditioning comes into play, then you start to
exert even more pressure while making even less of a commitment once you establish that in certain instances, you will cover a good number of options/the easy option your opponent would like to take. Your opponent starts thinking "what IF he nairs here/now"? Then as falcon you could just dash dance and they have to respect your nair even though you may not even have an intention of putting one out and you're just dash dancing so now you're
threatening with no commitment).
that's basically it. if they're doing something bad/stupid in neutral (like limiting their own options) then you can just hit them of course.
hitting max distance attacks is also a part of this this as it is sort of a natural extension of that idea, the blue text, but primarily, to me, spacing is more about placing your moves in a correct place and it's more about where your body is + what attacks are available to you in your current state + what can your opponent due to you in a certain range while keeping the first 2 things in account and building your game around that.
it's not poking people with the tip-tip-tip of your attacks all the time although that's is a part of it (I think the understanding of positioning precedes that and is generally more practical)
a player with great spacing is basically someone who exerts a lot of
safe pressure, they constrain you without actually forcing the situation. play a good puff player, someone who understands the char, and you'll understand the feeling. puffs generally don't lean their aerials all the way into people or overtly run at people, they aren't overly concerned with hitting you where you are standing in at an instance, consider why that is.
with a character like fox I find that out of neutral I think of going about things in a manner that cuts off my opponent with a low risk on my part or makes them have to approach me. fox really has mediocre range if you think about it so his "spacing" is more focused on placing his body in the correct place imo.
I hope that answered your question but once it "clicks" everything falls into place. any comments etc.?
(also, imo, this stuff is much much more important than combos or edgeguards because you need to win neutral before any of those things happen and at that point you can learn combos/follow ups/techskill and apply them well. that's way easier to learn)
