Hey, just wondering if any of you guys are able to macro while you micro your units. Got any tips to help do both? A lot of times I find myself concentrating so much on microing units and for a good while, I don't do anything macro oriented.
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Hey, just wondering if any of you guys are able to macro while you micro your units. Got any tips to help do both? A lot of times I find myself concentrating so much on microing units and for a good while, I don't do anything macro oriented.
The key is to find a good time when you feel that the battle is going well that you can go back to your base. Go into your battles with the attitude that you're just looking for a time to go back to macro.
Day[9] likes to stress that should be microing while you macro, not the other way around. Instead of thinking "when in this battle can I go back to my base?" you should be thinking "when in this base management can i go to micro that battle?"
I love Day[9]. :D
Macroing whilst Microing, or Microing whilst macroing... It's a damn hard thing to balance at high levels of play and such an easy thing to just tell people to do.
I like day9 also, but it's just that it takes me a really long time to stream the videos on his website for some reason, so I don't watch his videos usually. But thanks for the advice though.
keep ur production buildings on hot keys, it takes 5 seconds to que up 5 units per production, just keep ur eye on minerals also as u micro a battle
He's just trying to be cute. Gradius is definitely right. You want to be in macro-mode until there's a fight, but you better believe that once a fight breaks out, it needs your attention until it's safe to look away.Quote:
Originally Posted by DemolitionSquid
I find that hotkeying my productionbuildings helps a lot. This way you can quickly pump out units during a fight without having to look away or taking too much time. Although I'm not in the Beta I suspect that SC2 won't be too different from other RTS's in this regard.
The easiest way to macro while microing is to set your units up so you don't really have to do anything(atleast for a few seconds) then macro really fast and get back to the battle. Since we can hotkey multiple buildings you shouldn't have to go back to your base anymore unless you need to do something like make depos or build.
Since I'm a zerg player, I often have to go back to my bases to tell them to spawn larave. I don't know why blizzard made it that we can't use spawn larvae on the hatchery's unit icon anymore. I think that would make macroing much easier for zerg players, but there must have been some reason why we can't do that anymore.
You should hot key your Queens and use the spawn larva ability on the minimap. It sometimes takes a few clicks to get it right, but it's still faster than going back to your base.
I think it will all go down to a lot of experience and well polished skills :D Theoritically speaking though Gradius got a point :D haha
Even though I agree that macro should come before watching battles I think a more fair thing to say would be.
"How much micro are you really doing in this battle" Alot of times people will attack move and maybe cast some spells but for the most part there not really doing much micro...maybe some cut moving back weak units and such but I feel alot of this time could be spent attack moving - macroing - coming back and moving some units back - then go back to macroing.
Another thing that helps is PREPARING for battle from a macro perspective, if you know theres going to be a big battle coming soon - build 5-6 pylons (we aren't pros yet guys)That way most of your macro can be done without even going back to your base at all (which is the case with most macro in sc2) And if you don't have to leave the screen to macro theres no reason why you should miss a production cycle because of a "battle".
1 Tip for each race
- Build a pylon or bring a shuttle with your army so you can warp things in while fighting.
- With zerg remember that if you HOLD down a production key it will make all your larva that unit very fast/ this tip applys for terran as well.
-Remember that once you reach the mid game you can make your buildings at your natrual not everything needs to be in your main, make sure you hotkey these new buildings as well.
In fact if you want to warp in a bunch of zealots you don't need to press Z then hold shift. You can just hold Z and click away.
Actually I think that with easier macro you should barely ever be looking at your base.
For example, as a Zerg player:
-use hotkeys for all production facilities
-rallys should be optimized for drone efficiency
-inject larvae though mini-map usage
-I hotkey my evo chambers under 9 and nydus network under 0
-Perhaps I should start hotkeying all "tech buildings" under 8 to shift through them and get my upgrades
=> you basically only need to go back to your base to spread creep and make new tech buildings. You can spend the rest of your time moving your units around the map, spreading your overlords and microing.
As a Terran player I can watch my battles, quickly hit 3 which is my production building hotkey, tab through to whatever I feel I need to reinforce and spam the corresponding hotkey. It's fairly easy when you remember all the hotkeys