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I am having a great deal of difficulty macroing with Terran because I cannot see any progress indicator once I have more than one production building hotkeyed to the same group. Without this, I do not know when my marines are about to finish, so I do not know to produce more marines. The only time I know to produce more marines is when the barracks are idle, which means I've lost a few seconds of production time.
To mitigate this I have tried using two hotkeys for my barracks. One hotkey has just a single barracks, so I can see the progress bar, and the other hotkey has all my barracks, so that I can quickly start production again. This works quite well except for a few fatal problems. First, with this setup, macroing out of barracks, factories, and starports may require up to six hotkeys, which I do not have available. Second, if my barracks (for instance) are producing marines and marauders, they finish at different times, so hotkeying any one barracks is still not good enough.
I wanted to play Terran, but, I don't particularly care for how their macro works. If anyone can suggest solutions to this problem I'd be grateful.
Thanks.
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What I do, and I recommend, si that you group all of your barracks in one hotkey, and constantly keep pressing it to check whether or not you need to build new units in them. Like once every 5 seconds or even more often, every second you dont have anything to do, press that hotkey and check your barracks and build units accordingly
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You'll either just intuitively know it or if you double tap the hotkey for all the barracks it should relocate your screen to the first barracks on the queue and I'm guessing most of your other rax are in proximity so you'll know how close they are to finishing.
Usually if you just keep your eye on all the units in the group (e.g. all 4 rax) just look to see when the little white dots disappear and hit it again, since technically you should always be tapping through your control groups and looking at those haha
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I just check each of them a lot. Constantly cycling through all my production structures. Eventually you start to get a feel for the timing and just do it naturally which is actually quite amazing to see when you watch one of your own replays.
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Tapping the hotkey more frequently I do not feel is any solution. Say that I have a set of actions I need to do. For example say that I need to float a CC to an expansion, transfer workers, and drop two supply depos. This requires a lot of mouse work so it will take a few seconds.
However, I know keeping up on production is the more important thing, so I tap my production hotkey before I start anything and I see that all the facilities are still working. Then, I click on my CC to lift it. At that exact moment, all my production facilities become idle again, but I am floating my CC somewhere, transferring workers, and dropping two depos, all the while my production is still idle.
This problem would be mitigated if there was a progress bar. If it was 50% to 75% full, I would know that I could execute the actions before having to macro again. However, if it was 80% to 90% full, I would simply queue my next production cycle and then execute the actions. There is no way to make this judgement if all I can see is a binary "yes production is active" or "no production is idle".
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tapping through hotkeyed buildings is what the pros do man. i dont think there is any other more efficient solution.
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Either tap often or learn the numbers of production buildings needed and just spend your money whenever you can. There isn't really another option.
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double tap more.. .. ... .. .. .
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You learn after time how long time it takes to make certain units, me for examle, i just click 4- a (aaa) depending on how many barracks i have evey 20-30 seconds without thinking about it, it just comes after alot of play.
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When you hear "kaboom baby", odds are your production cycle has finished and it's time to queue up a new batch of rax units.
Alternatively, you can use the popups about unit completion as an indicator as well.
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Just keep spamming, this is why Terran macrro is extremely hard if you don't have the apm (and imo the hardest macro race). There is no trick which makes u better, all you can do is increase your apm. Personally I have mastered macro in such a way, that everything goes automatically. Even if I play DotA i keep making SCV's and marines.
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i think the only real, solid solution is solid practice. after you churn out dozens of games with terran, you'll eventually get a feel for when you need to make the next unit. there is no easy way around it, just tap and check your production facilities whenever you can
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On June 05 2011 23:19 erisco wrote:
Tapping the hotkey more frequently I do not feel is any solution. Say that I have a set of actions I need to do. For example say that I need to float a CC to an expansion, transfer workers, and drop two supply depos. This requires a lot of mouse work so it will take a few seconds.
However, I know keeping up on production is the more important thing, so I tap my production hotkey before I start anything and I see that all the facilities are still working. Then, I click on my CC to lift it. At that exact moment, all my production facilities become idle again, but I am floating my CC somewhere, transferring workers, and dropping two depos, all the while my production is still idle.
This problem would be mitigated if there was a progress bar. If it was 50% to 75% full, I would know that I could execute the actions before having to macro again. However, if it was 80% to 90% full, I would simply queue my next production cycle and then execute the actions. There is no way to make this judgement if all I can see is a binary "yes production is active" or "no production is idle".
So you are saying that it's too hard to do all of that while switching through your production tabs? Then that's on you, it's one of those small things that helps separate the pros from the joes.
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Part of it is just muscle memory. I know for me, I just automatically make SCVs on time without even thinking about it (a problem when I get supply blocked a lot!). For army units, hitting your building control group is good enough usually, but if you really want to know how far along a unit is going, hit the key twice and you can see all the bars on your screen.
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well, if you don't want to lose any time, I guess you should just go back to your production building after a few seconds and keep pressing "A". I mean, the fact that you're worried about queueing units means that you don't have the queue even being close to full (like 3-5), but in my opinion, having 2 on production (with one already in the middle of production) is better than losing time on making them (not to mention the situation where you deciding not to add to the queue at that moment because they were still making marines then you get into a big battle and have to look at your units and leaving your production buildings idle for quite a while). Just queue up one more. Marines produce fairly quickly so it doesn't really hurt you. At most, you'll just be spending money earlier by 10 seconds in game time.
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Using the audio cue: a cool idea but are some cues skipped if other cues are happening simultaneously? I haven't paid enough attention to the audio to know if this occurs -- and paying attention to the audio that intently sounds difficult, as one missed cue and all of a sudden you could be missing a boat load of production time; perhaps this is a skill that could be mastered though.
Double tapping to view production facilities on-screen: other than that there are a number of probably scattered progress parse to visually parse, if your production facilities ever span more than one screen -- and judging by the games I've seen, they often enough do come the late game -- this solution becomes a bit inflexible. I would much rather use map bookmarks, as they can easily adjusted on the fly and account for multiple production facility locations. This seems like the most sound solution in my eyes.
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If you're really losing time on it you can also, when you realize they'll be finishing shortly just que up an extra round of whatever you're making and go back to focusing on something else. But just keep at it, eventually the times will start to become engrained in your head and you won't even need to think, you'll just notice that it's about time for a production cycle to end and you should build more stuff.
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whoops, misunderstood.
He's talking about not being able to see in the little box down there when a marine is done. Ya that's just a mental trigger thing and will only really come with practice.
Pretty much you just need to have the timing down where you can hit 4 (for me at least) and hold down a for however long you need to to get each producing without even looking at that part of the screen.
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Honestly don't try to mimic pros on there timings since they are so far ahead of the game its only hurting you. Queue up units and go back to your army or other duties instead because honestly its the best thing to do.
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Sorry erisco, you're going to have to constantly tap your production hotkey to see if you need to produce new units. However you can hotkey all of your production buildings to one control group and tab through them. For example, I use 4 for all of them. 4 is barracks, 4tab is facts, 4tabtab is ports. This will make it much easier on your hands and let you see all of your production icons in the same space, which makes it easy to tell whether or not every building is producing.
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I'm all about skill over automation, but including tiny progress indicators on each Barracks in a control group would not be "taking the skill out of the game". Sure, I know to (and do) just keep checking. Extra information is not dumbing down of the game, in fact, it would create more opportunity to perfect timings as there would be a better balance between not queuing and not missing production.
I wish people wouldn't confuse tactics learned to accommodate an uninformative UI with SupCom-style ease. Consider the fact that SC2 uses nearly the same UI as the original StarCraft, which was probably not originally designed to be used as a competitive tool with people pushing 300APM.
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On June 06 2011 03:13 erisco wrote:
Using the audio cue: a cool idea but are some cues skipped if other cues are happening simultaneously? I haven't paid enough attention to the audio to know if this occurs -- and paying attention to the audio that intently sounds difficult, as one missed cue and all of a sudden you could be missing a boat load of production time; perhaps this is a skill that could be mastered though.
Double tapping to view production facilities on-screen: other than that there are a number of probably scattered progress parse to visually parse, if your production facilities ever span more than one screen -- and judging by the games I've seen, they often enough do come the late game -- this solution becomes a bit inflexible. I would much rather use map bookmarks, as they can easily adjusted on the fly and account for multiple production facility locations. This seems like the most sound solution in my eyes.
Don't use audio cues. At least not mid-late game. They are delayed and sometimes skipped. It's just bad.
Instead, as has been said before, just check if your buildings are producing. If not, produce some more, if it is, go back to what you were doing.
After a while you'll just know when you have to build more.
To make the process easier, just make sure to start everything up as close to each other as possible so that all units pop out at once. Makes macroing so, so much easier.
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Just get your buildings synched up. Some pros actually start buildings late so that their units come out on time. This is no different than if you let the building idle for a few seconds (unless by delaying a building they get a macro advantage, which they almost never do). So don't worry about the synching up time, just make sure your buildings are always building units. And since your buildings are always building, you know that after you synch up a new wave of units is when you should do micro-intensive tasks.
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Once you play enough you get an intuitive feel for how long units take to build. When i watch my friend play (and try to help him out), I can say things like, "go build another tank", and he'll go back to his factory to see a tank at 98% completion. It freaks him out ^_^
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if people can macro in BW and you cant in sc2, its your problem. Play a lots, learn the body memory and get better.
if you cant, you are just not an RTS gamer
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I vote for adding a progress bar for each building once you have a multiple building selection. There is no reason not to.
I've thought this many times, and I'm glad someone brought it up.
Oh, and for those who think it will make things "easier" by rebuttal is: more information raises the skill ceiling. It certainly does not lower it.
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get more APM, and skill and u will see when marines are finish building :\
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On June 06 2011 04:48 sad.wish wrote:
get more APM, and skill and u will see when marines are finish building :\
Where you at, Mods? I thought we were cracking down on rubbish like this ^
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On June 06 2011 04:53 TimeSpiral wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2011 04:48 sad.wish wrote:
get more APM, and skill and u will see when marines are finish building :\ Where you at, Mods? I thought we were cracking down on rubbish like this ^
have a bit of respect for the effort mods put in, that post has been there for 5 mins and there are much bigger and worse threads right now due to MLG.
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Memorize the build times of the units and use the in game timer to approximate when they're almost done if you want some exact way to do it. I think most of the pros just have a mental clock of sorts that they use. After you've played 1000 games, it starts to become easier to get a feeling of when the round of units is about done.
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It's like cooking without a recipe book telling you exactly what to do and when. It comes easier with experience...muscle memory..etc.
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queing units will not lose you the game (of course more than two production cycles of qued units is bad). contrary to what people think, queing units does not drastically damage your game.
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On June 06 2011 05:07 CptCutter wrote:
queing units will not lose you the game (of course more than two production cycles of qued units is bad). contrary to what people think, queing units does not drastically damage your game.
agreed. when I get past my initial base I will often end up queuing a second marine even if my marine in production is at around 70%. As long as you are on a correct number of unit producing facilities according to number of bases you are fine. That being said, I never have more than 1 additional unit in queue, and never queue anything for gas intensive units like tanks and medivacs.
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On June 05 2011 23:19 erisco wrote:
Tapping the hotkey more frequently I do not feel is any solution. Say that I have a set of actions I need to do. For example say that I need to float a CC to an expansion, transfer workers, and drop two supply depos. This requires a lot of mouse work so it will take a few seconds.
However, I know keeping up on production is the more important thing, so I tap my production hotkey before I start anything and I see that all the facilities are still working. Then, I click on my CC to lift it. At that exact moment, all my production facilities become idle again, but I am floating my CC somewhere, transferring workers, and dropping two depos, all the while my production is still idle.
This problem would be mitigated if there was a progress bar. If it was 50% to 75% full, I would know that I could execute the actions before having to macro again. However, if it was 80% to 90% full, I would simply queue my next production cycle and then execute the actions. There is no way to make this judgement if all I can see is a binary "yes production is active" or "no production is idle".
You can just tap in the time it takes to move your mouse its one key stroke to check
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I have, and still do, struggle with the tapping that people have been talking about - i have rebound my countrol groups so that i can assign CC - F1, barraks - F2, Factories - F3, Starports - F4. This means that I can easily cycle through them by putting my little finger on F1 and just tapping my fingers across the 4 keys (think bored person drumming fingers on desk).
All I have to do then is keep an eye out for any buildings without the white dots..
It has really helped me (don't get me wrong, i still suck) but i find this a really nice way to keep an eye on production while having my fingers close to my army control groups (on standard numbers 1-5)
TMD
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If you're that worried about progress bars, use camera hotkeys over your buildings. There's absolutely no reason why we need progress bars in your control groups, just tap more than like twice every 30 seconds and you'll be fine. Shouldn't be too much to ask of anyone.
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On June 05 2011 23:19 erisco wrote:
Tapping the hotkey more frequently I do not feel is any solution. Say that I have a set of actions I need to do. For example say that I need to float a CC to an expansion, transfer workers, and drop two supply depos. This requires a lot of mouse work so it will take a few seconds.
However, I know keeping up on production is the more important thing, so I tap my production hotkey before I start anything and I see that all the facilities are still working. Then, I click on my CC to lift it. At that exact moment, all my production facilities become idle again, but I am floating my CC somewhere, transferring workers, and dropping two depos, all the while my production is still idle.
This problem would be mitigated if there was a progress bar. If it was 50% to 75% full, I would know that I could execute the actions before having to macro again. However, if it was 80% to 90% full, I would simply queue my next production cycle and then execute the actions. There is no way to make this judgement if all I can see is a binary "yes production is active" or "no production is idle".
this is what separates players from better players. you have to learn the timings on things and be able to do all those actions at the same time. seems like this is you hitting an apm wall and looking for a way around it. just practice and play a lot more and you'll get it.
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Why don't you just check the little white dot down on the bottom?
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Use the camera positions but other than that u just have to train ur brain to bui,d units at certain intervals I find this also works when playing zerg for my injects
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On June 05 2011 23:15 Teim wrote:
I just check each of them a lot. Constantly cycling through all my production structures. Eventually you start to get a feel for the timing and just do it naturally which is actually quite amazing to see when you watch one of your own replays.
Pretty much this.
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EPT
