Macro/Micro

sorry but i would have to say yes. if u dont know the hotkeys u are probably losing several seconds, if not even miliseconds. And that could be very detrimental in a game. if u have ever seen a SC proleague match then u will know what i am talking about. And i must say, out of geekyness they are very good! As i said before, losing those few seconds could mean losing a 1 ( idid say 1) dropship, but that could havebeen filled with tanks or whatnot. point is, macro and micro are both important to know, and hotkeys are the best. My recomendation: keep your left hand on the "a" key, that way u could move ur forces and attack at the same time. Now there are several ocasions where moving and attacking could be a bad thing. That will be up to u to find out, but otherwise, it helps alot. If u like we oculd play, my name is Trooper_Lozer, and i play on west, but i could go on either =D.

P.S. To avoid double posting i will post this vid here http://youtube.com/watch?v=p7ptEQZrDj4

very good and intense match. If you are interested in wathcing more, klazart does the best english commentaries, and there are tons of those on youtube.

 

Yeah I've seen some matches commented by him, they were quite funny (like 'alright guys, gg, gl... hf' ;D) but watching them doesn't help me much. I know they're pros and that they know everything about the game without watching those vids.

And it'd be cool to play but I'm in UTC+2 which would make it hard to find a good time for both of us.

ps I have yet to discover how gateways and channels work exactly :-X

 

ok. so. the exact definition of micromanagement (for starcraft, of course) is "Manually commanding a usually small group of units to deal the most possible damage while taking the least possible damage at the same time."

this means that, whereas a marine with one stim used and a medic with full energy against a zealot and a zergling will die normally, the same marine and medic can kill both the zealot and zergling using micromanagement, by using stim packs and other abilities, moving, and attacking at all the right times.

i know nothing about macro.

 

Could anyone suggest good ways to practice micro- and macromanagement? I need to practice that along with the hotkeys and groupings.

 

Play the game

 

what birdofprey said, the best way to practice ( in most cases ) is to play the game, try against the computer at first just to get the hang of it but sooner or later you will need to play against other people to get good at it.

 

There are ways you can practice specific forms of micro and/or macro with a friend i.e. just using 2 vultures to kill workers and seeing how long you can keep them alive. While this is just one part of the game, practicing it to get good at it, then learning how keep on producing units and structures, will make you better.

 

Most of the skills you need are learned from getting your ass handed to you because before that you don't know what you need to know. The most important thing is to watch replays so you can see what you did wrong so as to not do that next time

 

I was thinking about dealing with a computer with a set amount of population or something... But yeah I know 'practice makes perfect'. I still have to get used to the latency thing though. However, I played 2 games yesterday and it turnes out that I'm not hopeless afterall

 

One thing I can tell you is that you will learn as much if not more about playing as one race by playing AGAINST it as another race. If you like Terrans for example try to play some PvT games as the Terrans to get used to the counters

 

A friend of mine made a micro-practice map. It's sort of a defense map, except you are allied to the units you're supposed to be killing, so you have to hotkey your Photon Cannons and order each and every attack individually. If you can pull this off, you can actually get the cannons to kill more efficiently than they would if they were auto-firing, and it is the only way to survive on the map past the 30-kill range.

 

its true, i remember when i learned that trick from my older brother.... because the cannons will fire at the same enemy sometimes, and 3 shots will be useless because the enemy was killed a split second after the cannons attacked it.

it works VERY well against ranged enemys like goons ect, you can loose almost 1.5 seconds per misfire per enemy unit if your cannons fire at an enemy with 5 hp or w/e.