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I'd like some help pushing my game forward and I think the biggest area of improvement for me is managing multiple engagements. I suck at it. I'm mid-diamond P and I think I make up for it in other areas. Good macro, decent builds, map awareness. But for some reason I lose my shit whenever I need to split my army up. I don't know if this is common or if anyone can relate. Whenever I try to search for help on "multitasking" I generally find people are talking about managing their macro at the same time as the battle. This is not my problem at all. I actually frequently catch myself giving too much attention to macro and not enough to the engagement.
Let me try and explain how this feels to me. Say I've got a typical harassing Terran. I spot an incoming drop in the back of my main away from my (always 1-hotkey-bound) army. Instinctively I 1-A my army to the back of my main. Now I tell myself "dude, that's just one medivac. He's probably got his main army just outside your vision ready to stim-snipe your nat as soon as he sees you out of position." So I clumsily select a chuck of the army in motion and tell them to come back. Then I try and grab the reminder still in motion and rebind them to 2. Then I warpin a few guys and shift-2 to add them to this new group. Then I see his main army stimmed and sneaking in around the side of my natural. I instictively 1-A my army to ensure all my guys are engaged and realize I haven't unbound my 2nd break-off army from 1 and some of them start pulling back. "Ok," I figure, "at least they'll keep attacking the drop if it's in range" and come back if they're too far. I go back and try to unselect a few of the guys back in my main and rebind 1 so I can keep them a little bit under control. I take a look back at the main battle and of course I'm getting owned because he's got a good position in behind my mineral line an my guys are clumsily trying to squeeze thru spaces between minerals and nexus and other stalkers to attack. I try to correct and get a few forcefields even though there seems to be little benefit at this point. Meanwhile the drop in my main has picked up and relocated but my defending sub-group hasn't moved and is standing around idle. I hastily box a few of the defenders and rebind them and try to keep them attacking. But I see I accidentally boxed a bunch of probes as well. No time to deal with it now. I go back to the main engagement at the nat and warpin a full group to finally clean it up. His drop picks up and gets away, forcing me to keep a few defenders in the back. I quickly try to fix my binds, get my probes back mining and unbound from army groups, and do a little base maintenance/macro. The terran may repeat the double attack and cause me more frustration and slowly whittle down my econ. Eventually he merges his armies to bust my front and then I'm helplessly scrambling again to try and re-merge my groups and not accidentally have half my army streaming into a stimmed bio ball before the rest of the group gets there. But it's too late and I've lost too much econ and lack the mineral income to warp in a decent defense.
Or say I'm in a PvZ and decide to try a typical FFE into stargate opening. I chrono out a few phoenixes and shift-A a bunch of overlord locations on the way to harass his 3rd. (air group bound to 3) I keep an eye on the minimap for signs of danger while doing some macro back home. I nervously 3-A my air group into the 3rd to see what damage I can do, afraid of accidentally walking into a big air defense. I find 2 queens and a spore just finishing up. Too much to take head on, so I spin them around the back to see how many drones I can get before I'm forced to run. Not many. I slip into the main to take a look and quickly shift back to macro for a bit. Shit. Ran over 2 spores and lost a phoenix. I 3-move out and take a quick look at his main. "At least get some scouting info out of this botched harass before I leave," I say to myself. After pulling out, with relief, I rebind my air group to my main army so I can just 1-A everyone and not have to worry about split army for a while.
These are typical situations from my point of view. I struggle to hold off any decent harass or perform very good harass of my own, despite trying prism play or harass play as often as I can. I win a ton of straight-forward macro/1-A style games (e.g. 6/7-gate PvZ) Please tell me someone can relate to my frustration of hotkey subtraction/addition clumsiness or mis-boxing in the middle of a big fight. I feel like in most aspects of the game I'm high-diamond/masters but gold-level engagement management.
Basically: What can I specifically do to work on engagement management with multiple groups? How can I do focused improvement on this one aspect of my play?
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As a Zerg, in ZvT especially, I have 3 mutas, 12 or so lings, and an infestor bounded not only to their entire groups, but also to a separate key. I make 2 groups like this. That way, when I see a drop I can just push 9 a-move and fungal when I need to. For a Protoss, you'd probably be fine with about 4 zealots, 2 stalkers, and a high templar per medivac. So you can make one key with 4 zealots 2 stalkers and a templar, and a second key with 8 zealots 4 stalkers and 2 templars. That way you can handle one drop with the first key, 2 medivac drop with the second key, and a three medivac drop with both keys.
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Sounds exactly like my former PvT nightmare, now less of a nightmare but still a bad dream because I got a little better. I have three tips that helped me; they may or may not be that helpful for you depending on what you already do/your style (do you get a robo if you scout gasless FE? do you get fast blink? etc).
1. Once I know that terran will have medivacs soon, around 10 minutes for a gasless FE, I move my stalkers to the back of my base and hotkey them to 2. You need 6 stalkers to 2-shot a medivac, so I have that number initially then add a few more as time goes by. If you have stalkers on anticipated drop entrance paths the drop might not even land in the first place, either because terran is deterred or because you shoot it down. When I do this I rebind my hotkeys so that 1 doesn't have any of my drop deterrence group; not too hard if I do it before drops can hit.
2. Put pylons, probes, or obs slightly outside your base along the path you expect drops to arrive. If it's a probe or obs I like to patrol them in a small line so that I get more vision range. This gives you about 5-10 additional seconds of reaction time which is pretty important because you'll freak out less.
3. If I'm under immediate pressure and have to send some units to the back of my base then the bulk of my army back to my natural, I do it in two ways:
A. 1-a to the back of my base, then double-tap 1 to center screen on my army. Drag a box (or shift boxing to be more accurate if necessary) to pick the part that I want to keep, rebind that part to 1, then 1-a back to my natural. This leaves the split off part unbound, but when I do this I figure that those units are already a-moved to where I need them to go, so having them temporarily orphaned isn't horrible. Once I stop the immediate threat at my natural I can just go back to my main and rehotkey the split-off units (either to 1 or 2).
B. Similar idea, but different mechanism. 1-a to the back of my base, shift-click individual wireframes (ex: shift away a few zealots and stalkers), rebind the rest to 1, then 1-a back to my natural.
The advantage to B is that you can get more precision with what you split off (it can be hard to control what is boxed and what isn't especially if you're under pressure). However, you might shift-click units at the back of your ball instead of at the front, so they'll take longer to get there.
I think the most important part of splitting units is just practicing using the wireframes and being aware of what is in what hotkey at all times. If you aren't comfortable with rebinding hotkeys, shift/ctrl/wireframes, try to consciously work on them in your games.
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I always keep my stalkers in a separate control group from the rest of my army, and leave my stalkers in my main with the rest of my army at my natural. If the terran goes for double pronged drop+attack, i try to deal with the medivacs first while stalling at my nat with forcefields. It doesn't work perfectly, but I think its the easiest fix, and i'm afraid of mixing up what units are in what hotkey if i change them a lot.
edit:
@TrueSyzygy your quote reminds me of http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TallDarkAndBishoujo
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All the effort in the world can not substitute a replay. Nobody knows what your doing wrong without seeing it first hand. If you really want good advice TAILORED towards you and your playstyle. And it seems you do otherwise you wouldn't have made some long post. Then definitely add in a replay or 2 of your problems
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Just make your army into a big ass line that is horizontal to their army, then its hard as hell for them to fungal the whole thing and you can just 1a to victory with minimal blink micro (assuming that you are using stalker/colosi against Z)
Its always a good habit to keep units that are similar like zealots and sentries on one hotkey and have another hotkey for stalkers and colossi, and occasionally have your templar on a 3rd hotkey. In my opinion, you really need observers or whatever scouting unit to see what angle their army is coming and the order they attack in, (i.e, lings come first, then ultras, then infestors last) and properly position your army according to the order and the angle they come in. MOST IMPORTANTLY, DONT LET YOUR SHIT BE IN A BIGASS BALL THAT ZERG CAN SURROUND YOU IN! spread your army in a line, which is hard to flank.
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you can use patrol do split your units if you know that your opponent will come from a certain direction (defensive usage). Offensive usage requires high apm, no quick fixes.
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From what I see from tournaments, toss always have some cannons/HTs/stalkers/zealots leave in their base to deny drops in late game.
As for the phenoix, there is no reason why not just macro when you scouted the saturation of the third, harassed a bit, then leave them to some safe location then macro quickly and go back to phenoix control.
Whenever I go muta, I would fly around his base to see how many turrets there are, try to pick some buildings out.
If too many turrets protecting it, then I move them to the possible dropship path, then go to macro (upgrades, expand, injects etc) and fly the muta around, rebound the new mutas as one control groups together, start harassing when I have enough to kill off turrets.
There is no reason why you should expose your phenoix in danger (flying across the zerg's main) when you can just leave them for safety.
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EPT
