Macro/Micro

[JudasXPriest]

Ok... so ive played SC for about... 8 years on and off. Ive heard about it and seen it sooooooooo much. but i still dunno htf to do it >< can someone teach me?

[SirBaron]

Ok... so ive played SC for about... 8 years on and off. Ive heard about it and seen it sooooooooo much. but i still dunno htf to do it >< can someone teach me?

Well i think it's just knowing the hotkeys and when to strike them.
EDIT: I also think that microing is exactly opposite to when you go through all menus for peons and buildings manually, and when you manually click enemies and abilities. That's what makes me think it's primarily the hotkeys that's involved.

Could be wrong though :S

[UchihaItachi0129]

Ok... so ive played SC for about... 8 years on and off. Ive heard about it and seen it sooooooooo much. but i still dunno htf to do it >< can someone teach me?

Well i think it's just knowing the hotkeys and when to strike them.
EDIT: I also think that microing is exactly opposite to when you go through all menus for peons and buildings manually, and when you manually click enemies and abilities. That's what makes me think it's primarily the hotkeys that's involved.

Could be wrong though :S

that's only PART of it. some of it is hit and run tactics. and some of it is something TOTALLY different.

[mc2]

(ok I assume you use zerg most often since it's your chosen race in your profile)

1a. you need good reflexes and fast reactions, I personally find playing the card game snap is good for developing reflexes and reactions. Also practise precision when clicking on units, or moving them around.

1b. Like Sirbaron said, familiarize yourself with hotkeys. eg, when controlling a worker B=building, V=advanced building. On an unit A=attack, S=stop. Space bar=go to last reported news. H=start location, etc, etc.

1c. Practice Practice Practice. Be mentally alert at all times. Move your arms and fingers quickly on clicking and pressing. Make decisions fast.

2. Know your opponent's strategies and tech tree direction by scouting/spying. Also come up with your own strategy and tech tree direction. If you are zerg and they are building lots of BCs, you know u'll need to have scourges, devourers, hydralisks prepared. If they are massing tanks then go for guardians and queens. Don't forget while you are preparing to counter their attacks, you also have to prepare units and strategies to launch an attack on their base efficiently. Remember that Offense is the best Defense. :)

3a. When in a warfront/battle zone, this is where micro skills really kick in. You are probably used to send out masses of lings and hydras and let them do the job.

3b. it's a good idea to group your units, using numbers 1, 2, 3 etc. You can also go straight to your grouped units by pressing the number twice.

3c. When engaged with the enemy, try to get all of your units to attack ONE enemy unit, once he's dead, focus your fire on another ONE unit. By concentration your fire power, you're giving youself an advantage because you are decreasing their number of units faster.

3d. If your units are ranged (eg hydralisks), get them to move beyond or closer to the enemy target before attacking. This is very important in choke points because you 1st role of ranged unit lines up to attack a target and will block all other units behind them from proceeding.

3e. If your enemy send out an un-upgraded zealot and you have an upgraded hydralisk, you can "hurtle" your hydralisk. Your hydra will attack 1st since it's ranged. Just before the zealot reaches his melee range, because your unit is faster, you can move your hydra away from it to a considerable distance. After moving away from it, attack the zealot from a ranged distance, then move away again, then attack again. Keep repeating it until the zealot is dead and your hydra has not lose 1 single HP

3f. Use spell casters. Queens are excellent at taking out tanks and dragoons and lots. Parasite helps you spy on their base. Defiler's plague is great too. And if you have lots of lings, dark swarm can certainly protect them.

4. When using lurkers defensely, keep pressing stop (S) to stop the lurkers from firing. Wait until their units walk ABOVE your lurkers, then you let them attack in all directions. And also remember you only need 2 scourge to kill a muta/guardian/devourer/wraith, 3 to kill a scout/valk, 5 to kill a BC/carrier. Control them properly and don't let them suicide unnecessarily.

Hope I've helped :)

[[LightMare]]

traditional microing. being able to move your units in a tactical way so they do damage, but don't die. i got by that when i play a game

[UchihaItachi0129]

isn't macro your peon usage and micro your army usage?

and who uses it.

i micro i don't know about macro. i still dont get the difference.

oh and sorry if this thread has already been made it's 1 AM here and there were 5 pages worth of hits the search came up with ><.well that's it for today. i'll be back tomorrow. oh and anybody interested in a NOOB tournament? i need to ad. we need more people to make it interesting we have some people right now. here's the link: http://www.starcraft2forum.org/forums/index.php?topic=903.0

[Scarecrow]

Check this out http://starcraft.strategy-gaming.com/?page_id=27

I hope it helps.

[JBL]

micro: you beat 4 zealots with 4 marines because you run/attack etc.. u know.. u r teh gosu.. that's micro.

macro: you have 3 bases, you are attacking player 2, defending base #3 from player 4, building marines in base #1, building scvs in base #2 and building more factories in base #3 while scouting the map with your cloak'd wraith... all at the same f***ing time.

yeah i know my macro example is a bit extreme.. but you get the idea..

[StarFan]

I watched a good amount of proleague games played by the likes of boxer, nal_ra etc. and I am impressed about how they handle their units.

My question is how are they able to do what they do (e.g. vulture/siege tank mob where the vultures are directed to move in front of the tanks and then start laying mines all over the place simultaneously while the tanks start to go into siege mode). Another unit that is handled very well by these pros are the science vessels. I seen these units move as part of an army but when that army attacks, the science vessel moves with intention, irradiating enemies, moving back when getting hit, staying close to cloaked/burrowed enemies to provide detection etc.

Do pros use cntrl groups or just ctrl right click units? I mean if they are are using ctrl groups that is a heck of a lot of groups since these guys really create MASSIVE armies. How do they prevent from running out of space from assigning groups?

Any comments are appreciated here...

[-LT-]

Macro Management is the broader control of the game. It deals with everything from mining to unit production.

Micromanagement is the hard part of playing to learn. Micro is the control of units.

[MarineCorp]

Micro is short for Microwave
Macro is another word for Nacho.. delicious ;D

[-LT-]

Lmfao :D

[zeratul11]

lol

uhm.

micro is short for microsoft.
and macro is short for macromedia flash player. ^^

[MarineCorp]

Ha ha

micro is short for micromedia flash player
and macro is short for macrosoft ^_^

[LJYLJ]

much wierd stuff here..ill enlighten u abit ;)

micro/macro (easier said, multitasking)

micro - the abilitie to use a unit to its full potential

macro - the abilitie to produce unit at the highest possible rate allowed by your income

the most micro/macro intense race - terran (due to almost all units have special abilities, mines, mode, stim etc)

one little tips to help u improve ur overall multitasking is to start useing hotkeys even from the very beginning of the game (mark CC/nexus/hatchery as 1 or 0 and spam it to get the feel, then mark ur second building as 2 etc)

[mc2]

Well said LJYLJ.

It is especially important for Zerg players to hotkey their Hatcheries/Lairs/Hives. As it allows speedy selection and production. Although I don't tend to hotkey CC and Nexus, I usually hotkey Barracks, Factories, Gateways, etc.

Macro also involves managing your economy. That is expanding to new resource nodes at the right time with the correct precision. I think economic efficiency is a good term to describe macro. Like LJYLJ said, it is achieving the maximum output with the minimum input. So you want to produce units to its maximum potential while using the resources available to you. Personally I'm pretty hopeless at macroing as I would tend to overspend and runs out of resources easily (unless it's money map).

Microing involves a precision control over your units. Such as launching psionic storms at a precise location to cause the most possible damage. Or placing and controlling your medics to ensure the least amount of marine deaths. Or placing your lurkers strategically to avoid static detectors while being able to attack the enemy. Of course, there's a lot more to microing, basically you want to cause the most damage and kills to your enemy using your available units, and ensuring the minimun damage/death to your own units.

[GrahamTastic]

Micro is short for Microwave
Macro is another word for Nacho.. delicious ;D

LOL yes!! I could use some Microwaved Nachos right now...

ANYWAY, I think people are right about "macro" being base related. Macro is base management (and worker management) and Micro is army management.

[pro]

lol

uhm.

micro is short for microsoft.
and macro is short for macromedia flash player. ^^

pure win

[kuvasz]

I don't feel like creating a new thread for my question because it's related to this topic.
Is it possible to become a fairly good player without the knowledge of hotkeys?

I'm asking this because I just found my discs and would like to get into playing SC again, preferrably on a fairly competitive level. Though I've rarely used groups when I used to play, I did (and still do) have a good understanding of it and its importance and right now I can see room for improvement and it doesn't seem like a difficult thing to master or at least tame, provided I have the time and patience. But remembering all the hotkeys seems like an awful thing and just thinking about it makes me want to give up even before I started ;D

So... without giving an exact idea of what I mean by "farily competitive" (as it's unclear even for myself), do you think it's possible to be "fairly competitive" without the knowledge of hotkeys?

[Ursawarrior]

I'm still bummed about the whole 12 max units in a single selection tho, kinda hard to manage units, but on the other hand, it makes up for developing reflexes


oh and by the way, nice ava grahamtastic, what d hel is dat?!?! a sc2 reaver?

[Trooper_Lozer]

sorry but i would have to say yes. if u dont know the hotkeys u are probably losing several seconds, if not even miliseconds. And that could be very detrimental in a game. if u have ever seen a SC proleague match then u will know what i am talking about. And i must say, out of geekyness they are very good! As i said before, losing those few seconds could mean losing a 1 ( idid say 1) dropship, but that could havebeen filled with tanks or whatnot. point is, macro and micro are both important to know, and hotkeys are the best. My recomendation: keep your left hand on the "a" key, that way u could move ur forces and attack at the same time. Now there are several ocasions where moving and attacking could be a bad thing. That will be up to u to find out, but otherwise, it helps alot. If u like we oculd play, my name is Trooper_Lozer, and i play on west, but i could go on either =D.

P.S. To avoid double posting i will post this vid here http://youtube.com/watch?v=p7ptEQZrDj4

very good and intense match. If you are interested in wathcing more, klazart does the best english commentaries, and there are tons of those on youtube.

[kuvasz]

Yeah I've seen some matches commented by him, they were quite funny (like 'alright guys, gg, gl... hf' ;D) but watching them doesn't help me much. I know they're pros and that they know everything about the game without watching those vids.

And it'd be cool to play but I'm in UTC+2 which would make it hard to find a good time for both of us.

ps I have yet to discover how gateways and channels work exactly :-X

[EatMeReturns]

ok. so. the exact definition of micromanagement (for starcraft, of course) is "Manually commanding a usually small group of units to deal the most possible damage while taking the least possible damage at the same time."

this means that, whereas a marine with one stim used and a medic with full energy against a zealot and a zergling will die normally, the same marine and medic can kill both the zealot and zergling using micromanagement, by using stim packs and other abilities, moving, and attacking at all the right times.

i know nothing about macro.

[kuvasz]

Could anyone suggest good ways to practice micro- and macromanagement? I need to practice that along with the hotkeys and groupings.

[BirdofPrey]

Play the game

[lurkers_lurk]

what birdofprey said, the best way to practice ( in most cases ) is to play the game, try against the computer at first just to get the hang of it but sooner or later you will need to play against other people to get good at it.

[DE.50]

There are ways you can practice specific forms of micro and/or macro with a friend i.e. just using 2 vultures to kill workers and seeing how long you can keep them alive. While this is just one part of the game, practicing it to get good at it, then learning how keep on producing units and structures, will make you better.

[BirdofPrey]

Most of the skills you need are learned from getting your ass handed to you because before that you don't know what you need to know. The most important thing is to watch replays so you can see what you did wrong so as to not do that next time

[kuvasz]

I was thinking about dealing with a computer with a set amount of population or something... But yeah I know 'practice makes perfect'. I still have to get used to the latency thing though. However, I played 2 games yesterday and it turnes out that I'm not hopeless afterall :)

[BirdofPrey]

One thing I can tell you is that you will learn as much if not more about playing as one race by playing AGAINST it as another race. If you like Terrans for example try to play some PvT games as the Terrans to get used to the counters

[10-Neon]

A friend of mine made a micro-practice map. It's sort of a defense map, except you are allied to the units you're supposed to be killing, so you have to hotkey your Photon Cannons and order each and every attack individually. If you can pull this off, you can actually get the cannons to kill more efficiently than they would if they were auto-firing, and it is the only way to survive on the map past the 30-kill range.

[jamaylott]

its true, i remember when i learned that trick from my older brother.... because the cannons will fire at the same enemy sometimes, and 3 shots will be useless because the enemy was killed a split second after the cannons attacked it.

it works VERY well against ranged enemys like goons ect, you can loose almost 1.5 seconds per misfire per enemy unit if your cannons fire at an enemy with 5 hp or w/e.