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@ azn_dude1
Of course its down to preference, but i find it better, and in regards to techniques being taught in the guide, to be able to physically 'see' your bases as you inject, mainly as you can see the state of your drone saturation as an aid in assessing what sort of drone/unit/OV ratio you need to be producing soon.
Of course once people are more comfortable with certain timing and mechanics, they can devise and settle for a play style they find more comfortable, but i personally believe this set up allows for the fastest root in developing said good timing as being able to 'see' the input needed to make a decision every time you inject really helps in developing an ability to asses the amount of drones u need to pump into ur economy.
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I found the hotkey section to be the most helpful. The rest you can get better on as you play, but learning good hotkey habits is pretty critical.
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this is excellent. Macro is easily the worst part of my game, thanks so much
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Excellent guide! I'll just get the chance to ask a question regarding unit creation (and drone in particular) from larva: you suggest to rally all the drone production to the same base, but as you notice too, this isn't always feasible (hidden expansion, unsafe path, etc), so you actually need to create some workers on each of the hatcheries to keep on saturating all of them.
As protoss, this is easy since when you have a control group with X Nexus, X clicks will just add a single probe production on each of the bases. As terran, this is somewhat tricky since morphed bases don't work exactly this way and aren't considered "same building", so you may end up queueing X SCVs on the same single Planetary Fortress.
As Zerg, this is even more tricky, as it seems the default behaviour is consuming ALL larva on one hatchery before using larva of a different one. So for instance if you make X drones, you get X drones on the same base. ... actually, now that I think about it, this may really be the same issue I have with different terran bases, since my first hatchery is probably a lair at least.
If that was the case, I would really like a patch which fixes this, as it really messes things up!
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This is by far the best macro related guide I've seen.
Gotta write myself a note with things to check: Supply/Injection/Scout/Tech/Drone/Upgrades/Tumors xD
and keep doing all this at all times.
On October 27 2010 15:21 JasperGrimm wrote:
this is excellent. Macro is easily the worst part of my game, thanks so much
it was for me as well but recently I got obliterated in PvZ while having 4 Expo's, 10k minerals and average of 3k gas. It only took few Colossi and a shitload of Stalkers supported by by a handfull of DT's... T
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I quickly scanned over it, and will look at it deeper later, but it's really well written! Great Guide!
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wow. I'm going to have to set aside a block of time to read this. Thanks OP!
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Good stuff, OP.
I have a suggestion: it would be helpful if you could make some kind of step by step plan to help people implement this stuff. It's a ton of info to try to take in at once. My main problem(and maybe others?) is that I find myself constrained by my sloppy mechanics, so a lot of the 'higher levels' of gameplay/thinking suffer because I have to consciously focus on the mechanics.
So I'm curious if you have any techniques regarding efficiency of movement or training your hands to respond without so much conscious effort. Did you do anything specific besides just focus to get your mechanics down?
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Well written and lots of new stuff for me, thanks! The idea to have an "all-hatchery" control group never came up to me, but it seems like an awesome idea to improve multitasking which is one of my main issues atm.
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Edit: never mind, you answered my question in your guide, I just missed it.
Here is another question though. If you have all your hatches in one control group, aren't you worried that your units won't be made where you want them?
Say for example I want to make drones at my expansion and zerglings at my main. Isn't that a bit harder to do with your proposed setup?
Or say a big force is on its way to my natural and I want to scramble to build some units to defend. I want the units to come from the main and the natural, not from other hatches that are further away. Can you do this if you build your units using one control group for all hatches?
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Minor suggestion to include in the guide around rallying new units to your army (not for everyone it's quite fiddly). Let's say I have a group of lings in group 1, already in the field. If I click my hatch hot key, and build some more lings (s, zzz) (let's say leaving 3 unused larva) I will CTRL+click the now morphing egg wireframes, then shift-1 it, so the 'in production' lings are now already in the correct control group before they have hatched. Advantage to this is as I move my lings around the map, the morphing eggs are following the same move instructions so will go to their 'brothers' in the field when they hatch. This avoids the issue of random secondary rally points which you've already rightly highlighted.
Also, thanks for the top on hotkeying creep tumors! Never thought of that before - I think it'll be really useful.
Question - why hotkey queen + hatch together, and not just solo queens in each group? This means you can utilise queens individually where necessary without breaking established rally points.
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A very excellent guide. I keep floating between silver and gold and advice like this will hopefully help me continue in a more positive direction.
There is one mental techinque that I use that I think could possibly fit in well with yours. You can add evolving larva to a control group. As an example, when I make new zerglings at a base I CTRL+click the morphing larva then do a SHFT+1 to add them to my first group. I do this pretty much every time I create something. This way I don't loose track of them and they are already bound to the group when they pop. This does require you to be at the hatchery when creating them but this often will be the case, at least for me. It also requires you to start all the units in one control group > assign to group before you start the next ones. It may sound complicated but like a lot of your control group advice a little practice and it becomes second nature.
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On October 27 2010 17:37 Malhavoc wrote:
Excellent guide! I'll just get the chance to ask a question regarding unit creation (and drone in particular) from larva: you suggest to rally all the drone production to the same base, but as you notice too, this isn't always feasible (hidden expansion, unsafe path, etc), so you actually need to create some workers on each of the hatcheries to keep on saturating all of them.
As protoss, this is easy since when you have a control group with X Nexus, X clicks will just add a single probe production on each of the bases. As terran, this is somewhat tricky since morphed bases don't work exactly this way and aren't considered "same building", so you may end up queueing X SCVs on the same single Planetary Fortress.
As Zerg, this is even more tricky, as it seems the default behaviour is consuming ALL larva on one hatchery before using larva of a different one. So for instance if you make X drones, you get X drones on the same base. ... actually, now that I think about it, this may really be the same issue I have with different terran bases, since my first hatchery is probably a lair at least.
If that was the case, I would really like a patch which fixes this, as it really messes things up!
A patch to address that issue would be nice.
In regards to your comment about my suggestion you set your drone rally points from all hatcheries to the new expansion. I should have highlighted allot more that this is always very situational and depends on how saturated your other bases are. I personally only set the 'all drone rally' to my new expo if i am 'sure' all of my other hatcheries have at least more than 16 workers on each (and also as close to saturation as possible).
keeping tabs on each individual base, you should keep looking at the state of saturation of each. You do keep the individual drone rally points on each of their respective bases while keeping a close eye on the state of saturation of each. At the point any one of the bases becomes saturated (which usually follows the general trend of the order in which you created the bases), As my POV is generally over the base when i'm looking for saturation, i click that hatch then use the mini map to send my POV to my newest expo (or expo with least drones) and click the mins there. This keeps the individual rally for say expo 2 at itself while the saturated base will then begin sending drones to the base needing the most.
The state of drone saturation is always dependent on how well balanced you have maynarded to expansions, though. So if you intelligently maynarded to each base (so you keep roughly the same amount of drones on each base), keeping each of the individual drone rally points at each one is much more viable, as your state of drone saturation will raise much more balanced for each base.
It is in this scenario that then, once you have noticed all of your bases have roughly reached a state of saturation (for example 1st, 2nd, 3rd) as you create your 4th, it is 'then' possibly a good idea to rally all your 'all drones' rally point to the 4th.
To address the issue of larva the engines choice in how to use larva, you can also use the individual hotkey for each hatch (5/6/7/8 e.t.c.) and then TAB > S > DDD e.t.c. which will use larva from that individual base.
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On October 28 2010 01:27 ziggurat wrote:
Edit: never mind, you answered my question in your guide, I just missed it.
Here is another question though. If you have all your hatches in one control group, aren't you worried that your units won't be made where you want them?
Say for example I want to make drones at my expansion and zerglings at my main. Isn't that a bit harder to do with your proposed setup?
Or say a big force is on its way to my natural and I want to scramble to build some units to defend. I want the units to come from the main and the natural, not from other hatches that are further away. Can you do this if you build your units using one control group for all hatches?
you can simply address this issue by pressing the individual hotkey for a hatchery then TAB > S > [unit hotkey]
Hitting tab moves the selected object from the Queen to the Hatchery., in which you can then use the larva from 'that' hatchery to make units. Remember though that the units will be issued a 'move to' move command and once hatched begin moving to the rally you have set for all hatcheries anyway,
I generally find it easier to use the 4 hotkey and build units from all hatcheries and set the rally to next to the base in question, that way you will have a defense hatch from that base, while also having the other units you made running 'to' that base as backup for the defensive force that has just hatched there. As you will be wanting to defend that base anyway, i would imagine you'd want as many units there as possible. So using this technique to me seems the easiest and least fiddly way of doing this.
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On October 28 2010 02:42 Talkerst wrote:
A very excellent guide. I keep floating between silver and gold and advice like this will hopefully help me continue in a more positive direction.
There is one mental techinque that I use that I think could possibly fit in well with yours. You can add evolving larva to a control group. As an example, when I make new zerglings at a base I CTRL+click the morphing larva then do a SHFT+1 to add them to my first group. I do this pretty much every time I create something. This way I don't loose track of them and they are already bound to the group when they pop. This does require you to be at the hatchery when creating them but this often will be the case, at least for me. It also requires you to start all the units in one control group > assign to group before you start the next ones. It may sound complicated but like a lot of your control group advice a little practice and it becomes second nature.
You are referring to the E2A technique. I had a bit of a debate with myself about adding this into the guide.
There are some fiddly problems with doing this you see, which has been a constant problem with using this technique since early on in the beta. Blizzard decided to change the command issued to units that hatch from a hatchery with a rally set from it, from an 'attack move' command to a simple 'move' command.
This means that by using this technique can only be effective in very situational circumstances. For example it is easy to in early game rally some lings to your lings control group. But problems arise later in game when, for example you E2A rally some mutas to your harass group, if you are at the same time harassing the enemies mineral line, and by the time you have gone back to ur mutas and had to micro away from the base slightly, the mutas being rallied will often simply fly across the base and get shot down in the process.
A similar situation happens in situational circumstances when u are E2A rallying units to a force quite a way away from your base, especially if you have multiple bases spawning said units, as they are only issued a 'move to' command, it is often the case that they will inadvertently run into an enemy force or harass group and simply get shot to pieces as you are elsewhere, and due to the move to command, they will not take care of themselves.
Due to all of this, i find it only really a very situational thing to use the E2A technique, and eventually decided to leave it out of the guide due to the possible complications using this technique could cause for the people trying it out in games. I class that technique you see, a slightly more advanced one, as essentially, once people are more comfortable with meta-gaming, it can be a very powerful bit of controlling mechanic.
I may have to add a section about E2a as it happens, as it has been raised by you and a few other people.
Thanks everyone for your input so far, the guide is due to be updated, revised and altered in many little ways as new content is provided e.t.c.
I will say again, if any of you reading this feel there is anything worth going in there or gone into in more depth, please feel free to state it in a reply and it will be worked into the guide proper in due time.
Peace out,
- Xios
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On October 27 2010 23:45 ddog22 wrote:
Good stuff, OP.
I have a suggestion: it would be helpful if you could make some kind of step by step plan to help people implement this stuff. It's a ton of info to try to take in at once. My main problem(and maybe others?) is that I find myself constrained by my sloppy mechanics, so a lot of the 'higher levels' of gameplay/thinking suffer because I have to consciously focus on the mechanics.
So I'm curious if you have any techniques regarding efficiency of movement or training your hands to respond without so much conscious effort. Did you do anything specific besides just focus to get your mechanics down?
I have been really thinking about adding a 'tie-ing it all together' section at the bottom of the guide explaining the overall thought processes and how they relate to physical button presses and clicks e.t.c., also providing certain example situations and explaining the thought processes going on in them.
As the guide is essentially a modulated guide, going into each of the elements in turn while building on the previous, what it still lacks is a clear explanation (or as clear as it could be) of 'tie-ing it all up' as it were. Part of that section will definitely be some form of 'to do' lists with step by step guides/things to practice in the map editor e.t.c. to help people develop the techniques on a more robust level. The guide 'does' have these elements within it already, but they are disparate at best, i have it in mind to create a section (as stated) with this information existing in a much more condensed and referable state. This will probably take time for me to do though, so patience is a virtue in that respect 
In regards to your request for any tips on tightening your meta-game mechanics. The only thing that comes to mind is repetitive practice, at first it does take allot of conscious thought and physically looking at the keyboard and stuff like that.
But think about your ability at typing, it exists as a state of subconscious muscle reflex, typing the word 'concussion' for example happens very quickly and you shouldn't actually have to look at the keyboard when typing most of the word, as your hand 'knows' the minute and very specific differences in relative muscle contraction in relation to the distances between individual keys.
This is because through repetitive muscle use, you are developing the neurological connections, and by that i mean literally growing a part of your brain, specifically designed to carry out that sole task, which in this case is the tiny differences in distance between keys. To a point you do not have to think about it consciously, or look at where you fingers are falling.
This same concept works for you learning the key presses when playing Starcraft. Repetitive practice and sticking to the same system will help you eventually ingrain the muscle reflex of hitting the right keys at the right time accurately.
It may help you to really try and think about the shapes your hand makes and parts of your hand you are flexing when pressing certain buttons, as when you are making a conscious effort to be aware of the feelings, with an intent of developing it into your memory, your subconscious will act on this directive and it should speed up your development of muscle reflex somewhat.
Beyond that i would advise a few more things, firstly, go into the map editor, download a practice map or build order tester or something and simply practice hitting different hotkeys in relevant combinations, build things, practice certain elements of your mechanics, over and over and over again, untill you have that single thing really tight and acurate.
By this i mean literally build 100/200 hydralisk dens untill your hand 'knows' the pattern without you having to think about it.
Get 200 roaches on the map and practice adding and removing then from groups in the many different ways, stick to one way until you can do it without fail acurately every time, then try a different style leading to a different outcome (appending, removing - via the wireframe, by on screen, shift click, ctrl click e.t.c.)
Do there one at a time untill you are comfortable with 'that one' then move onto another, gradually do this through all of them, each time adding 'that' aspect, once practiced to perfection (or to a state you are happy with) into your collection of meta-game techniques.
Also do the same with adding hatcheries to hotkeys, changing rally points, issuing shift click commands in the various scenarios applicable, so on and so forth, basically do it with every element of your meta-game mechanics until it is muscle reflex.
You won't do this over night, but this is the best way for you to develop your control mechanics.
This is why using the same system of control groups is so important, as it is only this way you can truly develop muscle reflex, imagine a keyboard where the letters constantly changed keys, how long would it take you to type even 1 word?
Tis all about muscle reflex my friend, in regards to using the keyboard at least, and also with using the mouse, which is why it is important to find a sensitivity that is good for you and sticking to that.
Hope this helped.
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ya know, because Teamliquid doesn;t have stickies, this should be on liquidpedia2..... just sayin'. :D
Very helpful, and can be an eternal reference for Zerg players new and old.
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A few other tricks:
You can add eggs to a control group. (I usually do this with mutas, my scouting drone, etc.)
for scouting drone:
4sd shift-1 or control-1 (the OP is incorrect--you can shift-# into an empty control group and it works fine), and rally to first scout point (or shift rally to multiple). When it hatches it will run off, and already be in a control group.
4bstttttttttttttt shift-3 for mutas
Control your already-hatched mutas as normal. Your new ones will come join the group (assuming you are issuing move commands/attack commands) as soon as they hatch.
One thing to be careful of is if your newly hatched mutas try to fly over your opponents army, or over their base. You may not want to add newly morphing mutas to a group right away if you are harassing in a situation like that, or think you may be once they hatch.
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Predominantly Terran player here, but I like this guide quite a bit. I especially appreciate what seems to be your core message, that the key to good macro is developing habits and mental connections ("I hear the sound of larvae popping, so I make units, so I check my supply count, so I make overlords as necessary"). In future revisions, consider emphasizing even more that, unlike the other races, Larvae are essentially another resource that Z players need to manage and optimize.
One little nitpick that I can't help but point out, as an English major - you're using "allot" wrong here. That's a verb meaning "to divvy up" -- you want to use the phrase "a lot" (2 words) meaning "many" instead. (It's distracting from your otherwise very clear writing.)
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On October 28 2010 04:26 -Xios wrote:
I have been really thinking about adding a 'tie-ing it all together' section at the bottom of the guide explaining the overall thought processes and how they relate to physical button presses and clicks e.t.c., also providing certain example situations and explaining the thought processes going on in them.
It would be even more awesome if you could do this. I already have this thread bookmarked Excellent quality. This should be an article on the frontpage or liquipedia or something.
Thanks.
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EPT
