Macro Vs. Micro, and their effects on APM

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.