I first thought that Macro was just a
super easy skill set for just generally keeping track of your base, but it
turns out that it is actually a very complicated (and very important) piece to
StarCraft 2 and APM. Macro is all about managing your resources, and making
sure you use all of your bases buildings and abilities wisely and efficiently.
This is also a lot more in depth than it seems. I am in the process of going through
a guide that is very detailed, and shows exactly how your resources become most
effective, and gives calculations for an exact strategy on what sorts of units
can be produced from a certain number of bases. From this I think the best
thing for me to do is to develop a specific order to how I create and upgrade
my base. I also think that a way to increase my Micro is to figure also a
general layout for my base. This would comprise of actually coming up with a
strategy about where exactly I place each and every building I am using to
maximize its effectiveness.
I have started to realize that almost
everything about StarCraft is making sure you know what you will be doing
before you do it. This can be as simple as planning out where you will strike,
and in what way you will send them to where you want them to attack, to
something like where I will place each building in my base, and what order I
will create units in. Since I am doing most of my gaming offline, I am not
facing other players, so a lot of strategies become useless, since the AI does
not recognize what to do against them, and does not respond the way a person
would. This also means that I can develop strategies that are effective against
an AI that would not normally work against a real player. I have started to
realize things about how the AI normally utilizes its units, and that is that
it always builds a group of units to attack, and then sends all of them
to attack. This means that the absolute best time to attack an AI is just as it
starts to attack you (assuming you have good enough base defenses to survive
the AI's assault), because this is when it has very few offensive units in its
base. You have to be careful that it doesn't send back the units attacking you,
otherwise your attack force can be quickly overwhelmed. This is where the
balance is very important to get just right; your defenses need to be in a
position where they will destroy the attack force before you attack, but your attack
has to come soon enough the next attack force is not coming.
At first I thought that Macro was less
important than Micro, but it turns out that this is not the case. Macro is
much, MUCH more useful and important when playing an AI. Now the important part
here is that against a human player Micro becomes a lot more useful. An AI does
not really use Micro much, and because of this using your own Micro becomes
less effective. It does help in battles when you use something like StutterStep can help keep your units alive, and kill their units more quickly, but is
not as important when you opponent is not doing it. You can not make your
attacks work nearly as effectively without Macro, because you will be strung
out for resources, when you should be steadily pumping out troops, upgrades,
and bases. Macro is where you can really start to outpace an AI, because you
will be more effectively using you resources than they do. They already
practice a form of Macro, but do not know how to use it in a most effective
manner.
Just because Micro is less important, does
not mean it shouldn't be used. For someone beginning to play StarCraft Micro is
an extremely hard skill to master without sacrificing your Macro completely.
This means they ignore it, but if you are looking to increase APM, this is
where it happens. Instead of just watching a few minions attack each other,
pros are constantly moving their units into different formations, and making
them as effective as possible. This is through Micro, which is the art of
everything small. When your units are assigned to attack, they don't often
adopt a stance that is favorable, or actually shoot the things they should be.
Certain units are good against certain armor types, and it is important to
learn about these, so that your attack force can quickly dispatch your enemies.
Micro involves a lot of seemingly pointless clicking to make your units shoot
more, and take less damage. This doesn't seem like a big difference, but it is
actually amazing the difference it can make. I am not yet using very many Micro
strategies, but once I have my Macro organized, I will be able to start on
Micro.
One final part to both Micro and Macro is
that both require a lot of memorization. When I started this project I assumed
I would only have to memorize some different Hotkeys and then I would be with
the Pros, but this is absolutely not true. I am only playing with the Terran
race, so for me I am only memorizing the specifics for them. To master Macro
you need to know the cost of every unit and ideally the time to produce each
unit so that you can effectively make sure you are using your time and money
most effectively. For Micro, you need to know the entire list of unit Hotkeys
and you need to remember to use the strategies that you learn. This can
sometimes be hard, because at the beginning you won't remember to use the
techniques you learn. At the end of the day the biggest things to do are to memorize every piece of information about a race (yes this is a very large amount of things) and to always be doing something.
Some quick and easy tips to Macro:
1.
Make sure every base has 6 SCV's
getting Ore, and at least 22 getting Minerals
2.
Do not keep more than one unit
queued in any one building. Pros never have a unit being queued up, but that
means you need to know the times of each unit you create, and you keep track of
that. This is very hard to do when doing everything else, but units in the
queue means you have resources spent on things that aren't being made, which
slows down your production of other things.
3.
Always build SCV's
4.
Build more production structures
5.
Build enough supply
6.
Always know where your next
expansion is going to be, and how to secure it
7.
With the above levels of SCV's you
should be getting 220-240 Ore per minute and 750-800 Minerals per minute for
each base you have. When planning your strategy for a match do a quick
calculation to make sure that you are able to sustain that plan continuously.
