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How to stay on top of macro?

Forum Index > Brood War Strategy
Post a Reply
TonDan04
Profile Joined October 2025
1 Post
October 28 2025 19:06 GMT
#1
I seem to have a short term memory problem. I'll make a star port and forget about it until a minute after it is done. A minute in Starcraft time is a long time. I'll do a drop and pull dropship back only to forget where I sent it.

How do you not forget? Or do you know how progamers do it?
WolFix
Profile Joined December 2009
Poland40 Posts
October 28 2025 21:35 GMT
#2
You bind ur building that is being produced and press the button every now and then to check the progress of it. Same when building units, workers etc.
perfectspheres
Profile Blog Joined September 2025
81 Posts
October 29 2025 01:21 GMT
#3
On October 29 2025 04:06 TonDan04 wrote:
I seem to have a short term memory problem. I'll make a star port and forget about it until a minute after it is done. A minute in Starcraft time is a long time. I'll do a drop and pull dropship back only to forget where I sent it.

How do you not forget? Or do you know how progamers do it?


Just be dilligent about it (have heard some people set timers to remind themself).

Macro is probably one of the most important aspects of Brood War. Don't miss macro cycles 💯💯
perfectspheres6.wordpress.com | instagram.com/perfectspheres28
iopq
Profile Blog Joined March 2009
United States1001 Posts
Last Edited: 2025-10-29 06:46:14
October 29 2025 06:45 GMT
#4
On October 29 2025 04:06 TonDan04 wrote:
I seem to have a short term memory problem. I'll make a star port and forget about it until a minute after it is done. A minute in Starcraft time is a long time. I'll do a drop and pull dropship back only to forget where I sent it.

How do you not forget? Or do you know how progamers do it?


Hotkey a location inside your base (let's say F2) that has most of what you need and go back there every 15.12 seconds to make a marine. You should be able to see at least one starport and check if it's blinking

then hotkey a rally point to something like F4 and do the F2 click on production building F4 right click on the rally point combination so every building rallies to a useful place

hotkey all your units so you can easily F2, macro a cycle and then double tap 1 or whatever hotkey to go back to what you were doing
Highgamer
Profile Joined October 2015
1441 Posts
Last Edited: 2025-10-29 09:31:10
October 29 2025 09:21 GMT
#5
It's most likely not that your short-term memory is worse than average, it's just that everyone's gets overloaded in RTS-games once you try to play fast. That's why up to B or even A-rank people "forget" stuff for minutes, even after thousands of games...

It gets better though the more you play, because you build more and more habits and that frees up brain-capacity to actually think while playing. How fast and how much it improves varies a lot though from person to person.

The best you can do is focussed practice, working on individual problems, like forgetting your starport: You play some (custom) games where you keep telling yourself that this is your only concern: not delay/forget the starport. It should click after a while and become a habit.
I'm pretty sure progamers do (or: did when they were younger) a lot of this kind of focussed practice. They probably had people pointing out such mistakes and developed personal benchmarks to avoid them - and they did this for 10 hours a day...
Ze'ev
Profile Joined May 2025
120 Posts
October 29 2025 22:01 GMT
#6
yeah its basically an organizational issue; shift hotkeys and or rationalizing your hotkey usage in general. like maybe your starport should be bound to 4 because, your factory on 3 and your army on 2-- so you cycle between them very naturally while camera shifting back to your base for depots/scv production and such. Some of this is creating a system which is fluid and some of this is practice at actually maintaining that system. tbh 60% of starcraft probably just comes down to organizational aspects like that.

When I was first taking bw seriously I would play sp a lot, turn on power overwhelming and then try to nail a build with a certain minimum apm while using my camera keys. in your case maybe find a tvp build -- like fd into a starport drop -- that forces you to utilize multitasking micro/macro.
WGT-Baal
Profile Blog Joined June 2008
France3413 Posts
October 29 2025 22:45 GMT
#7
On October 30 2025 07:01 Ze'ev wrote:
yeah its basically an organizational issue; shift hotkeys and or rationalizing your hotkey usage in general. like maybe your starport should be bound to 4 because, your factory on 3 and your army on 2-- so you cycle between them very naturally while camera shifting back to your base for depots/scv production and such. Some of this is creating a system which is fluid and some of this is practice at actually maintaining that system. tbh 60% of starcraft probably just comes down to organizational aspects like that.

When I was first taking bw seriously I would play sp a lot, turn on power overwhelming and then try to nail a build with a certain minimum apm while using my camera keys. in your case maybe find a tvp build -- like fd into a starport drop -- that forces you to utilize multitasking micro/macro.


Exactly. Also if y all want a glimpse at korean practice you should check this (use google auto translate) :
https://m.blog.naver.com/PostView.naver?blogId=kcw4908&logNo=10156387470&proxyReferer=https://www.google.com/&trackingCode=external
Horang2 fan
Jealous
Profile Blog Joined December 2011
10228 Posts
Last Edited: 2025-10-29 23:06:02
October 29 2025 22:59 GMT
#8
The famous BBC StarCraft documentary from ~2005 or so which did an fMRI on NaDa's brain (IIRC; may have been Xellos) showed that the majority of the time spent playing BW for them was in the more "primitive" part of the brain where it borders on "instinct." What this means is that they don't "think" or have "short-term memory" in the traditional sense, but more like practiced, intuitive, and instinctualized responses to the game to a certain extent. As others have mentioned here, it is a combination of developing a repetitive habit of cycling through hotkeys to check on progress for everything and using that to time their next macro cycle. In other words, they are not sitting there and thinking "hmm, has been a while since my last Siege Tank queue, should check the Factory to queue another," it's more like they do 123451234512345 "oh Tank is close to done, 4t5t6vv7vv" or similar. It's on the level of reaction, or "instinct" as the program calls it. To get to that point, it will take a lot of grinding to get out of the low rank doldrums, to get to the point where more people play more consistently "meta" builds, and letting your training take over IMO.

ETA: To expand, a large proportion of hotkey usage for pro gamers is always the "select" action as opposed to "select + interaction" with the target hotkey. This is obviously more true for production facilities than it is for armies which often benefit from constant movement/shaping of the concave. When Flash is hitting 350+ APM in the midgame, it's not because he is interacting with every hotkey every time (a la 1a2a3a4s5s6t7t8vv 88 move screen click macro vv vv 9s 0s) it's more like 1a2a3a456781a2a3a4s5s6781a2a3a4s5s6s7t8t 88 click vv click vv etc. So basically, Flash's ~350 APM "rhythm" is constantly "checking" the progress of certain buildings and units and only acting upon them when necessary.

TLDR: Practice and repetition, not conscious effort or time-sensitivity.
"The right to vote is only the oar of the slaveship, I wanna be free." -- бум бум сучка!
XenOsky
Profile Blog Joined March 2008
Chile2284 Posts
October 30 2025 03:13 GMT
#9
45645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645646
StarCraft & Audax Italiano.
Jealous
Profile Blog Joined December 2011
10228 Posts
October 30 2025 04:07 GMT
#10
On October 30 2025 12:13 XenOsky wrote:
45645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645645646

Yea this is my TLDR instead of everything I posted.
"The right to vote is only the oar of the slaveship, I wanna be free." -- бум бум сучка!
Nirli
Profile Joined February 2023
Bulgaria378 Posts
October 30 2025 07:05 GMT
#11
There's no reason to know how progamers do it. Nobody else is humanly capable of replicating what they do.
Seems like you might need to practice vs the computer, maybe using the immortality cheat.
Just set a goal, practice that for 10 mins, e.g. if it's getting a dropship out and doing a drop, quit and do it again.
Move on when you feel comfortable and that's it. Might take like 500 tries. Maybe more, maybe less.
`Myst
Profile Joined September 2024
25 Posts
Last Edited: 2025-10-31 14:09:48
October 31 2025 14:01 GMT
#12
Basketball players dont "think" about dribbling the basketball.

As others have said, you hotkey everything and then you play enough to where you dont have to think about hotkeys. Until late game, if you have to look away from your army to macro you're doing it wrong. Finger placement (pros use two fingers) is as important as the hotkeys themselves.
"one of the guys came with a nice build the other came to win"
FlaShFTW
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
United States10231 Posts
October 31 2025 16:34 GMT
#13
On October 30 2025 16:05 Nirli wrote:
There's no reason to know how progamers do it. Nobody else is humanly capable of replicating what they do.
Seems like you might need to practice vs the computer, maybe using the immortality cheat.
Just set a goal, practice that for 10 mins, e.g. if it's getting a dropship out and doing a drop, quit and do it again.
Move on when you feel comfortable and that's it. Might take like 500 tries. Maybe more, maybe less.

huh? Progamers arent some special human variant, they're human beings just like you or I. The difference is that they have thousands of hours of practice. We can all practice to be as close to a progamer as we want.
Writer#1 KT and FlaSh Fanboy || Woo Jung Ho Never Forget || Teamliquid Political Decision Desk
TL+ Member
Highgamer
Profile Joined October 2015
1441 Posts
October 31 2025 22:09 GMT
#14
On November 01 2025 01:34 FlaShFTW wrote:
Show nested quote +
On October 30 2025 16:05 Nirli wrote:
There's no reason to know how progamers do it. Nobody else is humanly capable of replicating what they do.
Seems like you might need to practice vs the computer, maybe using the immortality cheat.
Just set a goal, practice that for 10 mins, e.g. if it's getting a dropship out and doing a drop, quit and do it again.
Move on when you feel comfortable and that's it. Might take like 500 tries. Maybe more, maybe less.

huh? Progamers arent some special human variant, they're human beings just like you or I. The difference is that they have thousands of hours of practice. We can all practice to be as close to a progamer as we want.

[image loading]
tankgirl
Profile Blog Joined May 2016
Canada425 Posts
Last Edited: 2025-11-07 03:54:44
October 31 2025 22:57 GMT
#15
On October 29 2025 04:06 TonDan04 wrote:Or do you know how progamers do it?


TonDan04! Hello.

I sense a soul in search of answers...

Others in this thread have graciously explained "how" progamers do it. Three cheers for our brothers in combat!

Now that your mind is ready, I am going to SHOW you. So I am sharing this hidden gem of a video, previously lost to the indifferent passages of time, especially for YOU. Yes, TonDan04, YOU!

So that as a new player you will comprehend the level of mechanical execution that we're actually talking about at the pro level. Here it is:





So, I hope this has partly answered your question of "how do they do it?"

Good! But please also consider that the KeSPA era-pros (2003-2011ish) grew up as children/teenagers in highly competitive team-houses with coaches and they have practiced for tens of thousands of hours. Yet even the fastest, most efficient players cannot do everything, and deciding where to use APM is important. It might look like they are "doing everything at once." But it is not so!

TonDan04, having reached some level of comprehension of pro play (the mechanics), you now have a framework upon which to consider the compounding factors at high-levels: build orders, map variance, engagement tactics, "RNG", mental aspects, mindgames, what is it like playing on stage (??), preparing for a 3/5/7 game series, etc. (this list should be much longer! and these concepts are not orthogonal ! )

TonDan, if you have read this far, congratulations! I hope you will feel the spark and the excitement that is broodwar.

TonDan! Do you understand now? That there was a reason they called him "God"...





One last thing, TonDan04! You can learn to play at a high level, too. It is great fun. I spent around a year of my life dissecting a pro-gamer's videos and replays, and practicing the mechanical technique. I improved.

But it also taught me this: that we as players ought approach the game as one ought approach a great work of art or literature: with humility, and respect.

Onwards, TonDan!

Oblivion Awaits...
https://tl.net/forum/brood-war/627255-progamer-settings
TL+ Member
Nirli
Profile Joined February 2023
Bulgaria378 Posts
November 01 2025 17:49 GMT
#16
On November 01 2025 01:34 FlaShFTW wrote:
Show nested quote +
On October 30 2025 16:05 Nirli wrote:
There's no reason to know how progamers do it. Nobody else is humanly capable of replicating what they do.
Seems like you might need to practice vs the computer, maybe using the immortality cheat.
Just set a goal, practice that for 10 mins, e.g. if it's getting a dropship out and doing a drop, quit and do it again.
Move on when you feel comfortable and that's it. Might take like 500 tries. Maybe more, maybe less.

huh? Progamers arent some special human variant, they're human beings just like you or I. The difference is that they have thousands of hours of practice. We can all practice to be as close to a progamer as we want.

Sounds to me like OP is maybe doing something just for the sake of it, i.e. has seen someone doing it or someone has told him to do it.
Which is basically what "see the pros" is. Doing something should have a puprose, that's why I recommended what I did. If you do something with a purpose and understanding, then you won't be forgetting your units (most of the time).
I get a sense that he's not playing at a very high level, the information is rather limited. For example, why play for drops when you can go more tanks and push earlier for a win. Are you playing to win, to have fun, to learn?
What he's shared is more about game planning rather than macro anyway.
iFU.pauline
Profile Joined September 2009
France1655 Posts
November 02 2025 10:15 GMT
#17
Delete social networks and throw your smartphone, most of us here are old and hard-wired the 20th century's way. Improve your focus to crocodile level.
No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere, I see Heaven's glories shine, And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear
[sc1f]eonzerg
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
Belgium6737 Posts
Last Edited: 2025-11-03 17:34:12
November 03 2025 17:33 GMT
#18
Like this
https://i.imgur.com/sWNu3HZ.mp4
prosatan
Profile Joined September 2009
Romania8489 Posts
November 04 2025 05:14 GMT
#19
Amazing post tankgirl !!
Lee JaeDong Fighting! The only church that illuminates is the one that burns.
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