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In the spirit of full disclosure, I'm going to get a few things out of the way before I start:
i. I'm not an upper league player
ii. this guide contains my suggestions, which have nothing to recommend them save any good sense you observe therein
iii. none of the facts utilized in the approach below were discovered by me
iv. I'm posting this guide because I think it covers some little-discussed topics and presents an elegant methodology
iv. while I've never seen another zerg play this way, I'm not claiming to be the first, nor do I expect credit for the notion or any similar nonsense
Ok then. On to the content...
Handling Eggs Efficiently
This guide is about handling your larva and eggs in a specific way, in order to avoid or simplify other tasks throughout the game. More specifically, the point of playing this way is minimize or eliminate:
- units idling at rally points,
- overlords clustered in inappropriate locations
- difficulty re-rallying reinforcements in transit or still in production
- solutions to any of the above which involve moving the camera
In order to execute the approach below, you would make use of a number of facts. None are new or extraordinarily subtle, but to keep everyone on the same page, here are many of the relevant facts:
- morphing eggs can be added to control groups, and can have individual rally points
- larva can also be added to control groups, but cannot have a rally point (and thus are unaffected when setting a rally point for a mixed group of eggs and larva)
- rally points are (re)set when their group recieves a right-click command, including one issued via the minimap, but aren't effected by a-click commands
- ctrl-clicking one of the unit portraits in the group selection frame will remove all units of a different unit type from the selection (ie "only these ones")
- shift-ctrl-clicking one of the unit portraits in the group selection frame will remove all units of the same unit type from your current selection (ie "without these ones")
- for the purposes of the above (and similar), eggs count as their own unit type, and eggs always count as the same unit type regardless of what they contain
- selecting your larva via your hatcheries (obviously) never selects any eggs... an easy way to start a fresh group of eggs that doesn't involve the eggs in your current selection
So, in order to best leverage the above facts, you might spend your larva in the following manner:
- build all of the units you intend to give the same rally point to or to put in the same control group
- issue a rally point to the group (if required)
- ctrl-click the eggs in the group, then add them to the appropriate hotkey (if required)
- reselect your larva via your hatcheries and repeat
When doing so, there is no longer any special need to re-visit these units seperately in order to manage them.
Pending reinforcements for a given group can be given updated rally locations as part of controlling the group itself... add a right-click immediately before a-clicking for long big repositions and reinforcements will always head directly for your army.
Reinforcements in transit recieve the same commands as the rest of the group as soon as they hatch, keeping them up to date without effort and often switching them to an attack command en route as a bonus (useful if rallyjacked).
Hatching overlords proceed directly to a either spotting location or safe one rather than to your front.
Rolling this into your "spend larva" macro task eliminates the need for a "clean up rally point" macro task.
Mentally planning out what you want to make with a batch of larva before using it assists with managing supply; it becomes natural to think something like "ok I have 13 larva and I'm building roaches, that'll use up 20-25 supply so I want 3 of it to be overlords." Always do overlords first!
Keeping on top of all this without panning around is huge.
As a quick example of how this feels, imagine it's early game ZvT. You've just poked up his ramp and seen a reactored factory with 2 hellions behind the wall. An extractor is nearing finished. Your injects just popped off and you have 11 larva available. I'd probably do something that looked like:
select hatcheries -> select larva (ie, 4s)
build 1 overlord
right-click minimap
select hatcheries -> select larva
build 5 pairs of zerglings
ctrl-click the eggs and add them to group 1
select hatcheries -> select larva
build 3 drones
right-click extractor
select hatcheries -> select larva
build 2 drones
select group 1 and right-click them to near my spine crawler
Now none of this needs to be dealt with again,
For a pro game example where this seems like it would have been really beneficial, see game 4 of Ret vs WhiteRa at ASUS ROG november (tal'darim). Watch the big broodlord push starting around 21 minutes from Ret's point of view... and every time he pans away to grab a hydralisk, re-watch the same period of time looking at the battle. It's absolutely painful. At one point WhiteRa blinks forward while Ret is scrolling away to get a hydra; his zerglings are on hold position and some of his broods are hitting a robo while 3 of them are sniped. A little later, somewhat past the point when they might have really helped, Ret finds 20 lings that have been sitting under an overlord cloud at a disused rally point since he moved out. Later still, he finds 10 more where there used to be a hatchery... it died while they were morphing so they just stayed where they'd hatched. His control and his army presence were both *significantly* impacted. And while the game is probably over anyway at that point, Ret later gg's when WhiteRa's stalkers bump into the 30(!) unguarded overlords near the bottom of his natural ramp
edit:
A lot of people seem to raise points concerning the various ways that using this technique can lead to rallying reinforcements through enemy units.
While this can happen, I personally feel that the optimal way to play around this danger is to expand on your use of this technique, not to abandon it. To illustrate what I mean, I'm going to share here some of my personal techniques for handling these sorts of situations; I feel they are solid and recommendeable, but I post them mainly as example ideas.
1) right-click near your army, then shift-a-click to move it
+ Show Spoiler +For example: you're playing bottom position on xel'naga caverns. Your opponent has static defense at his gold. You have a control group (let's say roaches) sitting on the left tower, including some units still in eggs as well as some units walking up from your hatcheries. You want to attack his natural.
Right-click the tower your roaches are at, then queue up an attack move towards his natural. Your roaches at the tower will simply a-move, but your eggs will be rallied to the tower, and your reinforcements will go to the tower (and around the gold expansion) before moving up to join your army.
2) box or ctrl-click the units actually present
+ Show Spoiler +So simple it should seem obvious: issue the "safe" commands to the whole control group, then select the units already in place before issuing further commands. In the first example, you might box the roaches on your screen immediately after issuing the queue'd a-click, ready to control them as they fight... or ready to re-select the whole control group for more broad repositioning.
Similarly, if I plan to dance my muta flock back and forth across a cliff, I'll usually right-click the control group to the "safe" side, then ctrl-click the mutas (deselecting the eggs) before moving them across. Then when I see fresh mutas arriving, I simply re-select the control group to add them to the fun.
3) make a new control group
+ Show Spoiler +Another thing that probably seems bonehead obvious, if I *really* don't want the units I'm building to try to join up with any of my control groups (perhaps there are seiged tanks in between), I simply start a new control group. Genius strategy? Maybe not, but at least I can see what's waiting at my rally point with the tap of a key, send them in without minimapping around, or add them into an existing control group once that becomes safe.
If you find you run out of army hotkeys, I recommend using alt-1 through alt-5 as alternate binds for 0 through 6 (you can also set shift-alt-# and ctrl-alt-# for adding or making groups on these numbers. Just don't make alt-binds for camera hotkeys... trust me, you will accidentally alt-F4).
Hopefully I've provided some food for thought!
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brilliant! ive been doing the same thing, and just finally incorporated stuff like rallying my mutas to a safe position then A moving the rest of them while im harassing. i agree ive never seen pro players use it yet, but i always thought it was sort of an obivous thing that will catch on sooner or later.
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This might be nitpicking. But it would probably to be easier to do:
Select hatchery(ies)
Select Larva
Rather than just Select larva. Since it's easier to hit 4 S rather than move ur mouse to the wireframe and hit ctrl+click
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On January 11 2012 07:03 nobuild wrote:
brilliant! ive been doing the same thing, and just finally incorporated stuff like rallying my mutas to a safe position then A moving the rest of them while im harassing. i agree ive never seen pro players use it yet, but i always thought it was sort of an obivous thing that will catch on sooner or later.
Stephano and Dimaga are notorious for using this since forever.
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On January 11 2012 07:07 darkrage14 wrote:
This might be nitpicking. But it would probably to be easier to do:
Select hatchery(ies)
Select Larva
Rather than just Select larva. Since it's easier to hit 4 S rather than move ur mouse to the wireframe and hit ctrl+click
This is what I do. I'll update the OP to be more clear.
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I do use this, but for discussion's sake I'll mention some drawbacks:
1. In some situations the amount of units in eggs or running towards the battle outnumber the number of units. The problem is if you jump back to your base to build something, then want to jump to your army, it won't center on your army but rather the largest clump of units on the map.
2. Particularly with mutas you don't want to rally over places where enemy AA may be present.
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can someone give me more info on this ctrl click thing.
Lets a have 2 infestors on ctrl group 3 and build 3 more, your saying I hit 5s (larva) make 3 infestors and then while the eggs are on the larva page hit ctrl 3? to add them?
Do they walk to the control group of units once the hatch or do I have to task a move coomand to them first?
Master zerg and I obviously dont know basics =(
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can someone give me more info on this ctrl click thing.
Lets a have 2 infestors on ctrl group 3 and build 3 more, your saying I hit 5s (larva) make 3 infestors and then while the eggs are on the larva page hit ctrl 3? to add them?
Do they walk to the control group of units once the hatch or do I have to task a move coomand to them first?
Master zerg and I obviously dont know basics =(
The answer is that so long as they are in the same group once hatched they will obey the same commands as the rest of the group automatically but they stay at the hatchery if not rallied until a command to that control group is given.
My one comment about this that has kept me from implementing is that I group my hatcheries on one hotkey so it is not always clear at which hatchery a particular type of unit is built which makes it difficult to CTR add eggs to the right group. What is your solution for this...do you simply tab through hatcheries individually when building units or do you select all larva at the same time. Also for mid-level players that do not have much APM this is actually a little more difficult in terms of the macro mechanic even though its an advantage in terms of unit management. For myself I find that I tend to start the game utilizing this but have to abandon it the further I get through the game as it becomes more APM intensive. I suppose the solution is simply playing more games and improving my APM/management skills.
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can someone give me more info on this ctrl click thing.
Lets a have 2 infestors on ctrl group 3 and build 3 more, your saying I hit 5s (larva) make 3 infestors and then while the eggs are on the larva page hit ctrl 3? to add them?
Do they walk to the control group of units once the hatch or do I have to task a move coomand to them first?
Master zerg and I obviously dont know basics =(
You make the infestors, control click the eggs on the unit selection page (you can skip this if you used up all of your larvae) and then add them to the control group with shift+x (where x is your desired group). Once that's done, any move command that you give to that control group will also rally those eggs to that position.
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On January 11 2012 07:28 Parodoxx wrote:
can someone give me more info on this ctrl click thing.
Lets a have 2 infestors on ctrl group 3 and build 3 more, your saying I hit 5s (larva) make 3 infestors and then while the eggs are on the larva page hit ctrl 3? to add them?
Do they walk to the control group of units once the hatch or do I have to task a move coomand to them first?
Master zerg and I obviously dont know basics =(
If you had 9 larva total, it'd look like so: (L for larva, F for infestor, e for egg)
(3) => you now have group 3 selected, which looks like:
[F][F][F]
(5s) => your group selection frame looks like this:
[L][L][L][L][L][L][L][L]
[L]
(fff) => now you see this:
[e][e][e][L][L][L][L][L]
[L]
(ctrl-click on "[e]") => your group selection frame now looks like:
[e][e][e]
(shift-3) => now your infestor eggs are in control group 3
(3) => you now have group 3 selected, which looks like this:
[F][F][F][e][e][e]
(right-click somewhere) => your 3 infestors move to "somewhere", and the rally point for your 3 eggs is set to "somewhere"
(a-click somewhere else) => your 3 infestors attack-move to "somewhere else", but the rally point for your 3 eggs remains at "somewhere"
Units do not exactly "walk to the control group when they hatch", but their rally point gets updated whenever you move-command the control group, and while they're on their way to the rally point they recieve commands normally when you control the rest of the group.
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I started doing this after seeing stephano's stream. It looked more complicated at first, but once you get used to it you realize most of the actions you're adding are mouse clicks that you line up while your other hand hits 4sv, 4sd, 4sz.
Using this as well as adding a camera location hotkey (I use W) and getting into the habit of setting/resetting it every time you right click to move your hatchery rallies made managing reinforcements super flexible and almost effortless. If you don't want to rally eggs to the rest of the units (ex: mutas harassing with turrets/marines between them and your base) or don't have time for ctrl-clicking as you're spending your larva then you can snap to your hatchery rally later and add them from there without any screen dragging or minimap clicking.
Now I cringe when I see really good zergs who drag their screen around furiously boxing units as they rally in from 4 different directions mid-fight or lose games because they rallied slow overlords to one spot the entire game. 
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i play random in team games and i do this as zerg as well.
this is actually the reason why i think its soooo nice as zerg to manage control grps. nothing easier than adding units to your grps while they are still mophing.
i do that also with my drones. i always set my eco rally point of each hatch to the corresponding minerals. when building drones i manually divide them to the mineral lines where they are needed (or gases).
i really wonder how many pro gamers this use. its a really big advantage of zerg.
one problem with is if you forget to assign them to a its kind of harder to remember those units ^^ since your not checking your rally point that often.
also if you accidently add "wrong" eggs to a grp. and if this grp already has eggs in it you cant seperate the "wrong" eggs without checking all the eggs or wait until they hatched. but if you dont make mistakes, this style is very nice
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On January 11 2012 07:47 Innovation wrote:Show nested quote +can someone give me more info on this ctrl click thing.
Lets a have 2 infestors on ctrl group 3 and build 3 more, your saying I hit 5s (larva) make 3 infestors and then while the eggs are on the larva page hit ctrl 3? to add them?
Do they walk to the control group of units once the hatch or do I have to task a move coomand to them first?
Master zerg and I obviously dont know basics =( The answer is that so long as they are in the same group once hatched they will obey the same commands as the rest of the group automatically but they stay at the hatchery if not rallied until a command to that control group is given. My one comment about this that has kept me from implementing is that I group my hatcheries on one hotkey so it is not always clear at which hatchery a particular type of unit is built which makes it difficult to CTR add eggs to the right group. What is your solution for this...do you simply tab through hatcheries individually when building units or do you select all larva at the same time. Also for mid-level players that do not have much APM this is actually a little more difficult in terms of the macro mechanic even though its an advantage in terms of unit management. For myself I find that I tend to start the game utilizing this but have to abandon it the further I get through the game as it becomes more APM intensive. I suppose the solution is simply playing more games and improving my APM/management skills.
why does it matter where those units get morphed? most of the time it just doesnt matter, right?
so lets say your grp 1 are roach/hydra, grp 2 are infestors.... grp 4 are all hatches -->
- 4s, R,R,R,R,R.... now you have 5 eggs and rest larvae in your selection window.
- ctrl click the eggs (now only the eggs are selected... notice that you dont have to move the screen and you dont care where those eggs are).
- shift 1 and those eggs are added to your control grp 1. as long as you do not issure a MOVE command, the roaches will rally to your rally point (or the individual rally point of "their" hatchery if they might differ).
now you can hit 4s again and you selected the remaining larvae.
- F,F,F and you build 3 infestors. in your selection window are 3 eggs and rest larvae.
- ctrl click eggs and add them to grp 2 with shift 2.
most of the time you will want to issue a move command somewhere at least near the grp they belong to.
Oh and btw:
some of these functions can be used by protoss as well. warping units can be given a move command and they will act as if this was the rally point. i find this helpful for warping in reinforcements and they will walk immediately towards your army. i guess the "normal" way is to spam a command and when they finish warping in, they will start attack moving with the first attack command. i found it annoying when units stood around for some time if you didnt spam a move. just alternate move and a-move sometimes when they are still warping in (same as with eggs).
archons will rally to a move command as well.
you cant select the units like eggs but its no problem to ctrl click each unit type and either shift # them to their grp oder if you have already selected their grp shift-strl click them to add them to the current grp and hit ctrl # to save the grp again.
hope this isnt explained too weird ^^ it all makes sense in my head 
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On January 11 2012 07:27 zylog wrote:
I do use this, but for discussion's sake I'll mention some drawbacks:
1. In some situations the amount of units in eggs or running towards the battle outnumber the number of units. The problem is if you jump back to your base to build something, then want to jump to your army, it won't center on your army but rather the largest clump of units on the map.
2. Particularly with mutas you don't want to rally over places where enemy AA may be present.
I've done this for a long time as well. I always control click my eggs and add them to my control groups. There are definately some advantages, but overall I consider it to be a bad habit and I am actually trying to stop doing this.
Zylog hit it on the money with his first two but there's several other drawbacks as well.
Generally speaking I think it's a good idea to do this early game or if you have map control. However I think it's a bad idea to do this if you are defending or in the late game.
With this method you can no longer set individual rally points for each hatch (well you can but as soon as you move your control group it will override the rally point). So if there's a siege line cutting off the area between your natural and your 3rd, you're going to have a difficult time rallying your units to one place.
Another example where you would want a hatch to have it's own rally point is if you took a hidden expo or a distant base, you may end up accidentally revealing it because units will be streaming in from that area.
I think the biggest reason why I want to stop adding my eggs to control groups is because it hurts my macro. I tend to make a TON of 1 unit at a time where it may be optimal to make a few of each unit.
For example, I am microing some mutas and it's time to make additional units/drones. I want to do this as fast as possible so I can go back to microing my mutas. Lets say I want to make 4 drones, 6 zerglings, and 2 mutas. Using this method I would have to press 4sdddd, 4szzz control click the eggs and press shift 1 to add them into my zergling group, then 4stt control click the eggs and press shift 2 to add them to my muta group. Without using this method I would just press 4sddddzzzztt and then go back to microing. I would worry about grouping them later whenever I need to actually use those units.
It's a real pain in the ass to control click and shift add small amounts of each units to each control group every time you make them. This leads to me making 30 zerglings and adding them to my control group to save time rather than making a variety of units.
Finally, whenever you have to split your army (such as multi drops) it's actually easier if you didn't have all your units in their respective control groups. You can 1a your army to deal with one drop and then box whatever is left to deal with another. That way you can still use your 1st control group hotkey. If you split up a control group you can no longer micro that group using the hotkey.
Overall it is a nice trick to know, but I wouldn't do it once you get into the mid late game and you have a ton of things to do at once; I think it slows you down too much.
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the question is: how do you add those units to your control grp if you dont use control click on the eggs?
you go to the rally point and then?
i would say like everyone else (toss/terran) by either control clicking one unit of a type (or double click for that matter) and then shift # or you select your grp, control shift click on that type of unit and hit control # again.
am i missing something? is there an easier way? ^^
if not how is control clicking the eggs worse? you have to do the same "work" anyway
of course there are circumstances where you dont want to override your rally points. if they stand in the supply line as you mentioned for example. but is it really that hard to pay attention and NOT adding them as eggs in that moment?
and the disadvantage might as well be that your reinforcements could get picked up at their individual rally point. or as mentioned in the op: if you do not forget those units you always have to switch screens and add them as they spawn.
i guess in the end it up to the player what he prefers. i have seen some strange habbits of some players and it still worked ^^
whatever floats your boat, right? ^^
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I love putting eggs in the control group especially when you are aggressive. your units will just join the battle immediately (and none of the zerg units have spell like stim). And they won't die when you need to retreat because all you have to do is to retreat all of them from your control group.
However, there are several bad things that i know:
1. if there is some fight going on in another place and you need to split your units up asap, it is not easy. for the rally point method, all you have to do is to grab some from the rally point and go.
2. It is hard to stop them from streaming into your opponent's army if they lock up a choke point in your base, you can set different rally point with each hatchery, so they don't just stream into frowntown, but with the egg grouping, it is really hard to split the army again.
3. the muta problem. sometimes your reinforcements will just run into marines/phoenixes/mutas and die horribly.
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Dear Sir,
you just made my day. This is 100% brilliant. I will work very hard to incorporate this into my play until I next hit the find match button. There will never be idle units anymore.
Thank you.
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i prefer poached eggs.
User was warned for this post
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I think Stephano does this i know he clicks his eggs into his control groups.
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Lots of pros do it, it's not as common as one could expect though. Personally I only use it in some situations, for example with muta, I always make sure to add the eggs to the control-group immediately since you always want them as massed as possible. I also often rally drones while they are in their eggs so I can have all my hatcheries rallied to my newest base and still keep my saturation when I build stuff.
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another drawback is, that reinforcements will also stop if you stutter step or if you do hold yur lings in the mineral line ..
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i use this method as well
pros: lets say ur doing ling infestor which this style is really good for u just use all hatchery hot key "s" then spam zzzzzzz. then just quickly control click one of the eggs then "shift1" then u will have happy lings going straight to where ur moving ur existing ling.
the next best thing with this is for ovis rally them as they r made n u wont run into the problem when ur opponent chase u all the way to ur rally point n u lose all ur ovis then proceed to lose from being massively supply blocked.
con: ur newly hatched army runs into opposing forces n die without even a fight.
when i first started using this when doing mutaling, fresh mutas will just fly to their death when ur harassing their base.
all in all if ur winning a fight u wanna keep pushing use this, when harassing just let them get rallied to their hatch rally point b4 grouping them. to me its still quite a usful methed of handling armies.
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I have been doing this for a while now, and all i can say it REALLY helps. Once you get into it it's pretty easy. IMO most helpful in ZvZ's when you dont have to grab reinforcing Lings at your rally. Keeps them safer from running into Banelings on their own.
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Let's be fair. There are NO drawbacks in using this method, This method is just brilliant, and an exellent habit to have.
You don't ALWAYS have to add eggs to groups. If you are under siedge in shakuras, and he has his units between the natural and your third, then you just rally your hatches and stop adding eggs to groups. It might take a while to get used to switching between doing it and not doing it when it becomes an habit, but it's totally doable.
One more example could be mutas: you generally don't want them with your group because they will take strange routes and might die trying to get to the group. So when you make mutas, you change the hatches rally instead of adding eggs. If you can do both adding eggs and using "traditional" method, which you should, this is just an amazing skill to have in your arsenal when playing zerg
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I do this in my play already this is just how i play for the most part.
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I have been doing this for a while and it is the main reason why I do prefer playing zerg over terran or protoss.
The only problem is that for a player in the low leagues like myself you are a lot slower at getting the units/drones out on to the field. Other than that it is fantastic since you never have units not in a control group.
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I do this all the time. It depends on your play style, however, more than anything.
If you want to do waves of units, this is bad. You want your units to all be in one place once you've made them, and you don't want them bumbling around the map.
If you want to always have a maxed army, this is gonna be useful.
I think both have their place. I was playing a game on Arid Plateau or whatever it is (the new desert map) ZvP and was lazy and didn't build units to fend off a 3gate, instead just expecting he'd go 6gate allin. Lo and behold, he 3gates me. I get back into the game after a while of my ramp being FF'd (which is ragey as anything, btw). I figure, the only way I can win is if I either a) harass to death, he probably doesn't know how to deal with mutas very well or b) use my much more mobile army to swing around and hit his 3rd and then his nat over and over and over until he has no more resources or until he just can't take the strain of having to do so much at once (he took the back third which I personally believe to be ill-advised). I ended up winning because I would send one wave in, snipe a nexus, retreat, gather the new forces and attack the other location, and just over and over. The waves of units coming in ceaselessly was what broke him in the end.
My ZvT i prefer to have all my units together and so i hotkey eggs, etc. ZvZ its similar.
I think the tactic or strategy you are employing has more to do with if you use this or how you use this rather than it being good overall. Similarly, i have the APM to just select 3 workers and put them in gas, and I'd rather not have to wait 17 seconds to do so. Its little, but it can make a big difference.
Great write up though :D I do appreciate the references to a pro game to validate the argument, it is well made.
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I almost immediately started doing when I first started playing zerg in the beta. I remember lying in my bed thinking about how I should set my control groups and actions when I realized this would be the most powerful and easy method. Without question, it will become the standard for professional zerg players in the future.
It feels so fluid and smooth that I feel bad for the zergs who don't do it. Poor people, madly boxing units for seconds at a time, trying to accomplish something which could have already been done beforehand. Not to mention the fact that after you're used to it, it takes less than half a second to complete. This is also part of the reason I always try (unsuccessfully I might add) to get people to think about how they're going to control their units and macro BEFORE actually learning a method. Think first and you don't have to relearn later on.
There are also a host of other cool tricks you can do with this as well. Nobody does them yet, but soon every top zerg will be. The multitasking will be intense.
Baneling worker drops:
1. make 2 ling sets and one overlord (3 actions)
2. ctrl add to control group (1 action)
3. rally to convenient location (1 action)
.
. (continue playing as normal)
.
4. double select ctrl group (1 action)
5. make 4 banes, rally them to the overlord (2 actions)
.
.
.
6.drop on workers
Using this method, you have a baneling drop ready and waiting in a control group. Notice that it only requires 8 actions to set all this up. The only drawback is the need to remember to morph banelings. Also note that for 200 minerals and 2 supply you can have potential baneling drops setup all over the map. If they get destroyed in route, its only a small loss. If you do this in 3 separate locations (only 24 actions to setup!), its hard not to get at least some worker kills.
And of course you can do this with other types of units as well.
But that is just the tip of the ice berg.
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For people saying this adds actions: it adds less than you'd think, since you'd otherwise do basically the same thing once your units hatch.
A lot of people seem to raise points concerning the various ways that using this technique can lead to rallying reinforcements through enemy units.
While this can happen, I personally feel that the optimal way to play around this danger is to expand on your use of this technique, not to abandon it. To illustrate what I mean, I'm going to share here (and add to the op) some of my personal techniques for handling these sorts of situations; I feel they are solid and recommendeable, but I post them mainly as example ideas.
1) right-click near your army, then shift-a-click to move it
+ Show Spoiler +For example: you're playing bottom position on xel'naga caverns. Your opponent has static defense at his gold. You have a control group (let's say roaches) sitting on the left tower, including some units still in eggs as well as some units walking up from your hatcheries. You want to attack his natural.
Right-click the tower your roaches are at, then queue up an attack move towards his natural. Your roaches at the tower will simply a-move, but your eggs will be rallied to the tower, and your reinforcements will go to the tower (and around the gold expansion) before moving up to join your army.
2) box or ctrl-click the units actually present
+ Show Spoiler +So simple it should seem obvious: issue the "safe" commands to the whole control group, then select the units already in place before issuing further commands. In the first example, you might box the roaches on your screen immediately after issuing the queue'd a-click, ready to control them as they fight... or ready to re-select the whole control group for more broad repositioning.
Similarly, if I plan to dance my muta flock back and forth across a cliff, I'll usually right-click the control group to the "safe" side, then ctrl-click the mutas (deselecting the eggs) before moving them across. Then when I see fresh mutas arriving, I simply re-select the control group to add them to the fun.
3) make a new control group
+ Show Spoiler +Another thing that probably seems bonehead obvious, if I *really* don't want the units I'm building to try to join up with any of my control groups (perhaps there are seiged tanks in between), I simply start a new control group. Genius strategy? Maybe not, but at least I can see what's waiting at my rally point with the tap of a key, send them in without minimapping around, or add them into an existing control group once that becomes safe.
If you find you run out of army hotkeys, I recommend using alt-1 through alt-5 as alternate binds for 0 through 6 (you can also set shift-alt-# and ctrl-alt-# for adding or making groups on these numbers. Just don't make alt-binds for camera hotkeys... trust me, you will accidentally alt-F4).
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I do this myself, and have been doing so for a long time. I believe it is by far the best method to manage your production and army hotkeys. People are mentioning "drawbacks" to this method.... there are no drawbacks. There are, however, occasional circumstances where you should revert to the standard method of managing your stuff (you are not forced to use the technique all the time!):
1) Mutalisk micro. You are in a situation where freshly hatched mutalisks may take an unsafe path to join your existing mutalisk flock. SOLUTION:
A- Add mutalisk eggs to a NEW control group and give them a good rally point (eg existing mutalisks on 5, mutalisk eggs on 6). When it is possible for your mutalisks to safely join the others, join them by simply doing: 6, shift+5. This is preferable as you never have any mutalisks that are not part of a hotkey group, which means that you will NEVER have "forgotten" units left at old rally points and you never even need to move your screen to the new mutalisks' location to grab them. If you are really pro, you could even use the extra mutalisk group to simultaneously harass elsewhere that is more 'rally-friendly'.
B- Temporarily go back to the "standard" method.
2) An opponent is likely to breach an area between your hatcheries, causing freshly spawned units to be given dangerous commands. SOLUTION:
A- temporarily go back to the "standard" method. In such a circumstance, regardless of what method you use to manage your units, you will need to micro-manage production and rally points to keep your units safe - hotkeying eggs does not change this.
EDIT: forgot about this:
On January 14 2012 20:59 Schnullerbacke13 wrote:
another drawback is, that reinforcements will also stop if you stutter step or if you do hold yur lings in the mineral line ..
This is simply another circumstance where you would want to temporarily use a different method of managing those units; the WORST case being that you go back to the "standard" method of gathering units at rally points. There is no 'drawback'. Just because the technique cannot be used 100% of the time does not mean it is bad.
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On January 15 2012 07:37 Apaquin wrote:
Baneling worker drops:
1. make 2 ling sets and one overlord (3 actions)
2. ctrl add to control group (1 action)
3. rally to convenient location (1 action)
.
. (continue playing as normal)
.
4. double select ctrl group (1 action)
5. make 4 banes, rally them to the overlord (2 actions)
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.
.
6.drop on workers
Genius. So simple, so easy. I'll be using this next time I am in a bling bomb game! (or at least I will try to remember to use it). Share more!
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On January 15 2012 08:10 jumai wrote:For people saying this adds actions: it adds less than you'd think, since you'd otherwise do basically the same thing once your units hatch. A lot of people seem to raise points concerning the various ways that using this technique can lead to rallying reinforcements through enemy units. While this can happen, I personally feel that the optimal way to play around this danger is to expand on your use of this technique, not to abandon it. To illustrate what I mean, I'm going to share here (and add to the op) some of my personal techniques for handling these sorts of situations; I feel they are solid and recommendeable, but I post them mainly as example ideas. 1) right-click near your army, then shift-a-click to move it+ Show Spoiler +For example: you're playing bottom position on xel'naga caverns. Your opponent has static defense at his gold. You have a control group (let's say roaches) sitting on the left tower, including some units still in eggs as well as some units walking up from your hatcheries. You want to attack his natural.
Right-click the tower your roaches are at, then queue up an attack move towards his natural. Your roaches at the tower will simply a-move, but your eggs will be rallied to the tower, and your reinforcements will go to the tower (and around the gold expansion) before moving up to join your army. 2) box or ctrl-click the units actually present+ Show Spoiler +So simple it should seem obvious: issue the "safe" commands to the whole control group, then select the units already in place before issuing further commands. In the first example, you might box the roaches on your screen immediately after issuing the queue'd a-click, ready to control them as they fight... or ready to re-select the whole control group for more broad repositioning.
Similarly, if I plan to dance my muta flock back and forth across a cliff, I'll usually right-click the control group to the "safe" side, then ctrl-click the mutas (deselecting the eggs) before moving them across. Then when I see fresh mutas arriving, I simply re-select the control group to add them to the fun. 3) make a new control group+ Show Spoiler +Another thing that probably seems bonehead obvious, if I *really* don't want the units I'm building to try to join up with any of my control groups (perhaps there are seiged tanks in between), I simply start a new control group. Genius strategy? Maybe not, but at least I can see what's waiting at my rally point with the tap of a key, send them in without minimapping around, or add them into an existing control group once that becomes safe.
If you find you run out of army hotkeys, I recommend using alt-1 through alt-5 as alternate binds for 0 through 6 (you can also set shift-alt-# and ctrl-alt-# for adding or making groups on these numbers. Just don't make alt-binds for camera hotkeys... trust me, you will accidentally alt-F4).
All this shift-clicking and new control groups is making things much more confusing than they need to be. All 3 of these methods would definately add actions over standard rally point.
I believe that there are many standard macro situations that can add actions as well; such as the following example.
Good zergs are constantly producing units (keeping their money low). So they are producing these units in very small numbers. 4 lings here, 2 mutas there... You get the point. For the sake of convience lets say that adding any amount of units to a control group takes 1 second. Lets assume the zerg player produces lings 5 separate times during a minute period. Every time he produces these lings, he adds the eggs to his control groups. He would spend 5 seconds of that minute adding his eggs to his control groups. Now, imagine he uses the standard rally method. He could group all the lings together at the end of the minute and that would only take 1 second. He saved himself 4 seconds.
Over the course of a game, you may be adding eggs to your control groups 100s of times. While the time saved may not be significant for any one time, it can definately add up to something noticable, especially in situations where you are stressed for time (late game).
This game is all about personal preferance and what you are comfortable with. This technique works very well in many situations, and as others have said, you can simply use the standard rally technique in situations where this doesn't work. The standard rally technique has many downsides as well.
I have gotten so used to adding eggs to my control groups that I often have trouble converting over to the standard rally technique in the situations where I shouldn't be grouping my eggs (it's a hard habit for me to break).
The only point I'm trying to make is that I think each player has to find his own comfort zone with his mechanics. As I said earlier, I feel like my macro is better late game when using the standard rally method. I find myself getting supply blocked less, being able to split my army easier, and I make a greater balance between drones/units as well as a greater variety of units. I think having less of a dependence on control groups is a fantastic thing to work on. I would say it's my biggest limiting factor in my mechanics at the moment. Sometimes you just have to go with things on the fly.
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On January 16 2012 12:06 vsportsguy wrote:
Good zergs are constantly producing units (keeping their money low). So they are producing these units in very small numbers. 4 lings here, 2 mutas there... You get the point. For the sake of convience lets say that adding any amount of units to a control group takes 1 second. Lets assume the zerg player produces lings 5 separate times during a minute period. Every time he produces these lings, he adds the eggs to his control groups. He would spend 5 seconds of that minute adding his eggs to his control groups. Now, imagine he uses the standard rally method. He could group all the lings together at the end of the minute and that would only take 1 second. He saved himself 4 seconds.
Over the course of a game, you may be adding eggs to your control groups 100s of times. While the time saved may not be significant for any one time, it can definately add up to something noticable, especially in situations where you are stressed for time (late game).
You could also argue it the other way; your new units will be immediately moving to assist in battles where otherwise they would be hanging around idle at a rally point for up to a minute. While the time saved small numbers of extra units participating in a battle may not seem significant for any one time, it can definitely add up to something noticeable.
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On January 16 2012 12:06 vsportsguy wrote:
Good zergs are constantly producing units (keeping their money low). So they are producing these units in very small numbers. 4 lings here, 2 mutas there... You get the point.
This is little flawed. The point in keeping your money low is not keeping your money low. In most cases having 2 mutas at your rally at x seconds and 2 more at x+10 seconds is not better than having 4 mutas at x+10. In low larva situations where the hatchery wouldn't produce larva for 10 seconds having the eggs morph earlier is better but adding the eggs doesn't require ctrl-clicking either.
Like others already said this technique needs to be used according to the situation. Its best utilized in late game when you're making lots of units at a time and in attacking situations when you have map control and want all your units in battle as fast as possible.
Also I see a lot of pros set their hatchery rallies across the map while attacking and furiously box units running around when retreating. Using this method would make retreating easier.
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some people have pointed out that units streaming across the map are liable to get sniped. A somewhat simple fix is, instead of adding eggs to your existing main army, have a dedicated hotkey for morphing units. for example, I have my lings on 1, banes on 2, mutas on W (bound to 0) while hotkeying morphing mutas as 3. when they hatch and the reinforcement line is safe, I hit 3 --> Shift + W. A few more actions, but can still be executed purely via hotkeys.
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[B]Good zergs are constantly producing units (keeping their money low). So they are producing these units in very small numbers. 4 lings here, 2 mutas there... You get the point. For the sake of convience lets say that adding any amount of units to a control group takes 1 second. Lets assume the zerg player produces lings 5 separate times during a minute period. Every time he produces these lings, he adds the eggs to his control groups. He would spend 5 seconds of that minute adding his eggs to his control groups. Now, imagine he uses the standard rally method. He could group all the lings together at the end of the minute and that would only take 1 second. He saved himself 4 seconds.
Lets do some unsimplification for moment.
Boxing rallied units, could take anywhere from 1 to 5 seconds because you have to:
1. Move the screen to get all the units (if its a stream of units coming in, its going to take longer)
2. Add them to the control group
3. You would possibly then need to issue addition orders to attack or move into position
4. Move the screen back to wherever you need it
Adding eggs to control groups would require:
1.Holding control and clicking on the eggs.
2. Pressing shift+1
That should only take about .2 to .4 seconds after you're comfortable with it. Even less if you're a top player. If you add eggs to control groups 5 times it adds up to 1 to 2 seconds of time. So it might even take less time than the other method and you won't have to move the screen at all. Obviously if you add units 20 times it would take up 4 to 8 seconds of time and perhaps not be as quick. But once you're getting up to that number of units you wouldn't be making them all individually anyway.
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On January 15 2012 15:08 Hairy wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2012 07:37 Apaquin wrote:
Baneling worker drops:
1. make 2 ling sets and one overlord (3 actions)
2. ctrl add to control group (1 action)
3. rally to convenient location (1 action)
.
. (continue playing as normal)
.
4. double select ctrl group (1 action)
5. make 4 banes, rally them to the overlord (2 actions)
.
.
.
6.drop on workers Genius. So simple, so easy. I'll be using this next time I am in a bling bomb game! (or at least I will try to remember to use it). Share more!
I'm glad you like it. I stopped playing due to injury and typing is difficult for me as well, but I will try to write up the methods I used in relation to this.
I think the most important part of the control group egg adding method is perfecting it. There is a technique that simplifies the process and integrates extremely well into traditional hotkey configurations. The basic idea is to add alternate hotkeys for adding units to control groups. So lets say we add some hotkeys such that shift+1 and control+Q add selected units to control group 1. Compare
Method A (traditionally used at this point)
1. Hold control and click on the eggs
2. Press shift+1
Method B
1. Hold control and click on the eggs
2. Keep holding control and press "Q"
To some, this might seem like a small difference but considering the time frame involved, its actually huge. One iteration of the control group egg adding method can take anywhere from about .15 to 1 seconds depending on the player. Top players will obviously be doing it faster. I personally perform Method B about 3 times faster than Method A. For me, that's saving around .4 seconds each time I add eggs. Considering you might repeat this method 1000's of times per game, you may be saving several minutes worth of time that would otherwise be wasted. And in the heat of battle .1 seconds can make a significant difference.
Obviously you'd also want to add the alternate hotkeys such that:
shift+1 = control+Q
shift+2 = control+W
shift+3 = control+E
shift+4 = control+R
shift+5 = control+T
and so on for whichever control groups you'd like.
I'm relatively sure this is the simplest and fastest and therefore the best way to add eggs to control groups.
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shift-ctrl-clicking one of the unit portraits in the group selection frame will remove all units of the same unit type from your current selection (ie "without these ones")
Thanks, I didn't know about this. This is really useful!
In ZvP I go baneling rain about 80% of my games (roach/banerain/infestor). A big problem is that after a battle, when all my overlords have dumped the banes, I can't get rid of the overlords in my control group, and if I have corruptors/broodlrods coming, which I normally put on 3, they are mixed with the overlords, and what happens is:
1. All my overlords follow the 5 roaches or so that are still alive afterwards when I went them to press on to do damage after the entire toss army is gone and I lose too many overlords fumbling around.
2. I need to remax instantly and add new roaches to the control group (through discussed larva adding methods of course) but then the overlords are still there, most usually in the yellow or red, and I lose a ton of them, as the majority of these roaches are back home or being rallied across the map and the overlords just run into the toss base way forward (because they are remants of the previous army) and just die or:
3. I need to remax and attack asap when toss has no army but I spend too long screwing around my hotkeys that I miss my indow.
4. I remake the control group by hitting ctrl+click on the roach portrait, so leave out the overlords, but then get raped by DTs because I excluded the overseers as well.
With this tip, I can just move command 1 (army+overlords) to home, then ctrl+shift+click the overlords, remap hotkey, and then press on with roach+overseer+etc.
edit: As for the issue of adding eggs to control groups, like mutas, which you don't want running over marines or turrets, like when your harassing with mutas...
What I do is add eggs of mutas to my control group, and move them to a 'forward position' that's safe and out of the way. Then, I box select the mutas that are actually out already and I'm flying around with, and just remap them as a new hotkey. The eggs will fly out to that position, and I can add them to the group. However, it's really just time and place. Sometimes, adding units to the hotkey is best, othertimes it's not. Often times I won't add muta-larva to my hotkey group.
It's just information that can be helpful. When you are rallying roaches in a roach/ling all-in against Protoss, this is EXTREMELY useful, for example, as you won't be stuck with ling/roaches just sitting there doing nothing. I always morph larva, then ctrl click the morphed eggs and add them to hotkeys, or rally them somewhere. It has a use in certain situations.
edit2: As for stutter step micro, well for one it's better to have fresh units on their way and stuttering instead of just sitting there and not coming at all (coming over stuttering and slow is better than not coming over at all), but you can change your stutter step micro from hold/move/hold/move to move/a-move behind/move/a-move behind. This way, your forward units will attack towards the enemy, while rallied units will move toward that location, since both a-move and the move command are 'forward' of them anyways. You don't need to stutter using only the Hold command, attack works just fine too.
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Great read with a lot of useful tips that one might think are very simple yet it's very possible that someone doesn't know one or more of those points.
I tend to add eggs to my current control group, but there's a small problem with that, whenever there's an egg in a control group (e.g. zerglings and zergling eggs) if you a-move your lings don't attack until the eggs have hatched, don't know if I'm doing it wrong or this actually happens...
I tried to defend a 6 pool with drones and ling eggs on the same control group so that the lings went where my drones were when they hatched and when I attacked the drones just moved...
If you hit A and select any unit they will attack, but just hitting A and selecting somewhere in the map won't help... :S
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I'm personally trying to stop using this method all the time because often times I want to attack with a main force of roaches in a protoss natural, while having a small number of roaches split off to do some economic damage at the the third. If everything is already in one group it's more difficult. I kinda just start 1a'ing (always bad as zerg).
If your units get cut off from reinforcements it's really difficult to keep them separate and stuff ends up running in too soon
This method is helpful sometimes, but as much as it helps with simple things, I think it would be better to skip it so splitting up units is easier.
Still a good trick to know though.
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On January 17 2012 12:19 Shousan wrote:
I tend to add eggs to my current control group, but there's a small problem with that, whenever there's an egg in a control group (e.g. zerglings and zergling eggs) if you a-move your lings don't attack until the eggs have hatched, don't know if I'm doing it wrong or this actually happens...
I tried to defend a 6 pool with drones and ling eggs on the same control group so that the lings went where my drones were when they hatched and when I attacked the drones just moved...
If you hit A and select any unit they will attack, but just hitting A and selecting somewhere in the map won't help... :S
The way you have written this makes it sound extremely ambiguous. To clarify: eggs use the rally point of the hatchery, which can be overridden if you give them a personal rally point. However, eggs cannot be given an attack command.
You could have given your zerglings a rally point and then issued them an attack command once they had hatched.
On January 17 2012 12:51 Samtastic wrote:
I'm personally trying to stop using this method all the time because often times I want to attack with a main force of roaches in a protoss natural, while having a small number of roaches split off to do some economic damage at the the third. If everything is already in one group it's more difficult. I kinda just start 1a'ing (always bad as zerg).
If this is a spontaneous attack you will encounter the same problem simply by having your units hotkeyed in the first place (and I assume you are not advocating having your army NOT hotkeyed at all). If, instead, you have planned ahead to have a small roach split, what's stopping you making that group when they are eggs?
If your units get cut off from reinforcements it's really difficult to keep them separate and stuff ends up running in too soon
This method is helpful sometimes, but as much as it helps with simple things, I think it would be better to skip it so splitting up units is easier. If you are talking about a situation where you have some units behind enemy lines, and other units charging into battle to assist, the best option is to give your "behind enemy lines" units a new hotkey to control only them. You need to bear in mind that they are also part of the hotkey group with all your other units (unless you planned ahead), so if you give a command to ALL your units you will need to correct the behaviour of your "suicide" units to make sure they aren't doing anything silly.
Tricky, but the alternative is to have units streaming into battle that have no hotkey! (or sitting idle) You also avoid the situation whereby if you need to retreat and units are still rallying in you must frantically try to box all incoming units so that they don't die. If you are hotkeying eggs you already have all new units hotkeyed, and so retreating is effortless.
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EPT
