Starcraft 2 – Beginner’s Guide (Part 2)

Sorry for the delayed post… Been a bit busy setting up my forum and getting paid subscriptions going.

Anyhow… Here is the next Beginner’s Guide!

Micro/Macro Management

I have several articles posted on how to increase your APM in many ways, but this post will be all out you, the beginner (Whom should be the only one to be reading this : D).

Beginner’s Micro – Impossible? Nope… Vital? Yes!!! Some ‘beginners’ don’t micro AT ALL., they just click on the buildings to build them, they don’t use Control Groups, etc. Although it may be hard forcing yourself to do this the first few times, it will pay off.

I don’t expect a beginner to memorize all the hotkeys (although you should, I recommend it), but I do expect you to do just TWO hotkeys.

1. Control Groups… I have explained them before. Just use them! Ctrl + #…. Recall that unit/building later with that #.

Control Group set-up should look FAMILIAR to this, but everyone has their preferences.

Zerg

1 – unit
2 – unit
3 – unit
4 – Hatchery
5 – queen
6 – queen
7 – queen
8 – queen

(If you even get to 8 )

Protoss

1 – unit
2 – unit
3 – Gateway/Warp Gate
4 – Building (Robo, Stargate)
5 – Nexus
6 – Building (The building you didn’t use on 4, put here)

Terran

1 – unit
2 – unit
3 – Barracks
4 – Factory
5 – Command Center
6 – Starport

(4 and 6 can be switched around if you plan on using more of the Starport than a Factory that game)

I recommend you find a set Hotkey set up that YOU like (not what I use… But if you like mine, use it!).

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2. Build key – As you might remember, this is a Beginner’s Guide… So the MOST helpful hotkey in the game for you to use is…

B

and

V

Use them!!! It will speed up your APM so much if you’ve never used them before, believe me.

b – Normal Buildings
v – Advanced Building

So if I’m Zerg and want to build a Spire I’d go: v-s … or a Spawning Pool: b-s …. or an Evolution Chamber: b-v

I don’t expect you to know the hotkeys for the buildings themselves yet, but use the ‘b’ and the ‘v’ as MUCH AS YOU CAN.

As for Combat Microing for beginners, I’d suggest just taking a look at the Free Video Guides here: Free Video Guide Thread

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Beginner’s Macro – To be honest, Macroing is much harder for a Beginner to do than Microing. Macro involves almost all economic objects of the game, as well as building buildings and units.

Microing can be accomplished by using a few hotkeys, but to Macro, you must use hotkeys AND macro.

How to Macro:

1. Find your inner clock. What I mean by this is: You must have have a timer going in your head that tells you when to do a certain thing. *Explained in more depth below*

2. CONSTANTLY be building drones until you reach a total 24 Drones on your Mineral patches and 3 Drones on each Gas.

What do I mean by your ‘inner clock’? You must acknowledge when things to be done when. The BIGGEST mistake beginners make is watching the battle they are in. Although to micro properly you must watch the battle, but only for about half the time.

If you engage in a battle that lasts 40 seconds, you should have only concentrated on your troops for 20 seconds. The other 20 seconds? You need to be tending to your MACRO.

What would happen if you were to lose the battle you were just in and watched the entire thing? I’ll tell you what would happen:

1. Your economy production would have stopped. Less workers = less units = you lose

2. You don’t have another army to back you up!! If you get in a small battle at the very beginning of the game, let’s say: Your 5 Marines vs. their 3 Zealots. You would lose, but if you simply press 3 > a > a (Assuming you have two barracks), you would have 2 more Marines coming out. You would lose that battle and they would end up with 1 or 2 Zealots left over. If you didn’t build those Marines, those 1-2 Zealots will do some serious damage to your workers… but if those 2 Marines are sitting there and waiting, you could MICRO your Marines and your SCVs together to kill the remaining Zealots.

Instances of MUST HAVE Macroing:

* Queen – Spit Larvae… The ‘eggs’ from the Queen’s ‘spit’ come out at the exact time the Queen reaches 25 energy. This means, if you are a pro, you could have CONSTANT Larvae eggs coming out all the time. I make notes in my Video Guides to watch my Queen’s Larvae… As a Platinum Rank 8 player my Queen’s Energy stays under 30 for the first 15 minutes of the game usually. Towards later games I start to slack off due to big battles and 3+ Queen’s to deal with.

* Workers – Always be making at least one worker in most cases. There are some times when you need those resources to build units, but 50 resources isn’t very much. So try to keep worker production going. (Remember, only 24 workers per Mineral area)

* Units – As discussed above in the example… Don’t forget to make new units! If you only remember to make new units AFTER your army is dead, you will just get ran over.

* Don’t Queue – What I mean by this is, don’t build 2 SCVs at a time on your Command Center. Build one, and try to call your ‘inner clock’ to tell you when that SCV is about done. When it’s about done, build the next SCV. Same goes with units! I’ve seen so many beginners in my days that build 5 Marines in a barracks at one time. The extra 200 resources that is sitting in queue (4 marines not being produced = 200 minerals) could buy you another barracks AND you could produce a Marine in that. Keep that in mind!

* Population Max – When under max population of 50 (#/50), I usually build an Overlord when I am 2-6 population from reaching the max of where I’m at. It all depends on what I’m going to be spending in the near future. If I’m going to build another Hatchery and I have only 250 resources and my population is at 23/26, I won’t build an Overlord yet. Instead, I will build the Hatchery, then build an Overlord, then build units. On the other hand, if I were going to skip the Hatchery and try making a push with Roaches (they cost 2 pop. each), I would build the Overlord (now I’m at 150 resources), build 1 Roach (75 resources and 25/26 pop.), build a drone (26/26 pop and 25 resources)… By the time I get 150 resources again to build 2 more Roaches, my Overlord will be out.

That’s all I can think of for now. Macroing is a HUGE concept and is applied to nearly everything in the game. Some people say that Micro-pro’s are the best there is, but they are wrong. If you are great at Microing, but suck at Macroing and remembering to do such and such things… you will surely fail at higher level play.

Sincerely,

swords – Admin FGS