[myk777]

Hi guys... I am writing this inquiry and asking out opinions on how to develop a strong sense of macro and micro. Anything to help out players who might need some tips and controls for situation.

A tip that I can think of is for example:

You should rally your workers to the latest expansion that you have.
For example you just have your third expansion, you should rally all your CC's Nexus and Hatcherys to that third expansion's mineral line.

Another is that you can take some workers from your first base and natural expansion together and have them mine to your third expo.

Another tip I can think of is constantly build workers, scv, drone and probes as well as constantly build pylons depos or overlords as not to get supply blocked.

Please help and contribute to this thread.... thank you...

[iM yang]

A strong sense of Macro and Micro comes from mass gaming.
Knowing what building goes down when and where doesn't comes from losing, looking at the replay and saying to yourself 'WTF, how in the hell did I lose this?!'. You then realize where a mistake happened and you fix it.

Originally Posted by myk777

Another is that you can take some workers from your first base and natural expansion together and have them mine to your third expo.

Picking up small things like this comes from watching replays or stream of pros and noticing little moves they make that you don't do. Alternatively, whenever you ponder upon better ways to not die horribly, you look up a replay and see how a pro responds to said situation.

A tip that I picked up is to really concentrate and actively think when you play. If you keep dieing to 2 rax pressure but you KNOW how to deal with it, you've lost to it before, you need to think "what he doing? what is he doing? could he be 2raxing me?"
This leads to actively checking your opponents gas to see whether he is likely to go factory or reactor or tech lab.

If your problem is not spending your money, really concentrate on spending it. Keep it running through your head. "What's my money at? Do I need another pylon? Am I at the right number of production facilities? Am I producing out of gateways?"

After a while of actively thinking about your problems, you begin to get better at dealing with them and you move on to other issues in your gameplay and everything smooths out eventually.

Sorry for the long rant, the OP was a little convoluted and I wasn't sure exactly what you were looking for.

Quick Comments

Maynarde:

People struggling with the basics should read this

[Rythos]

Is re-rallying to new expansions actually a good alternative to Maynarding? I have seen some pros like Huk just re-rally on occasion, particularly with very early expands, but most people I know have told me that transferring workers is the better practice. Is it dependant on the timing/distance/positioning of your expansion or is it much of muchness in any case? Very curious.

[Maynarde]

Originally Posted by Rythos

Is re-rallying to new expansions actually a good alternative to Maynarding? I have seen some pros like Huk just re-rally on occasion, particularly with very early expands, but most people I know have told me that transferring workers is the better practice. Is it dependant on the timing/distance/positioning of your expansion or is it much of muchness in any case? Very curious.

Maynarding is always the way to go.

[Insidious]

Originally Posted by Rythos

Is re-rallying to new expansions actually a good alternative to Maynarding? I have seen some pros like Huk just re-rally on occasion, particularly with very early expands, but most people I know have told me that transferring workers is the better practice. Is it dependant on the timing/distance/positioning of your expansion or is it much of muchness in any case? Very curious.

Thats a tough question and there is no real answer.. I think that both can be the right choice depending on the situation In my personal opinion it is better to rally your hatch, nexus, CC because you are not having any point at which your economy is completely stoped which means that 15-20 seconds you are not mining might not sound like much but could be the difference between a colossi or not. I think it is better to suffer that loss of minerals over time rather in one big hit (this is a personal preference) however if one of your bases is low on minerals or oversturated.. (more than 2 harvesters) than it is always better to take those extras and send them to your 3rd or 4th so that they are mining to their full potential longer. and it is also depending on the game situation.. can u easily defend your 3rd or 4th base from drops?? if not then just rally workers instead of sending a whole group to die.. just my thoughts

[Insidious]

as far as Macro or Micro tips go. I watched in one of day 9's dailys that if you are having trouble with macro.. then you have those buildings hot keyed and constanly spam the creation of units on your different hotkeys like 5 rax 6 factory 7 starport spam the creation so that you are constantly spending those minerals. when watching the replays you check to see if you had more than 1 unit cued on most of your buildings. if u did then its a good idea at what ever time it is to put down another building.. constantly check this on replays so that your production builds are only cued with one unit. This should fix a lot of Macro problems. sorry i dont have a video reference.

[Next_rim]

I always use rallies for expos, it's much easier to keep track of worker count this way. I consider full saturation 22-23 on minerals, 6 on gas. To saturate a natural, I need roughly 14 rounds of probes. When i get 3rd up, I rally both nexi + the new one to minerals, and spam probes from 3 nexi. Full 3rd base saturation means 9 rounds of probes from each nexus. And I only transfer from main to 4th and from natural to 5th (if game goes that long).

Things get different when harass occurs, and I lose some probes, then I make decision on the spot depending on situation. You always want your mining probes on a safer expo, so sometimes it makes sense to rally to natural if you expect more harass on main.

As for production, I can only speak for protoss. 1 mining base = 4 producing structures. That is, 3 gates + forge, 4 gates, 1 gate + robo, etc.

For example, mid game PvT for me is 3 gates, 2x robos, 2x forges and TC/bay (I rely on DT's and prism to delay push and get upgraded colossi). After I'm done with 2:2, I add 3 more gates, propelling me to 6 gates and 2x robo.

This general rule of thumb varies depending on gas load. For example, 3-base PvZ for me is 5x stargates and 2 cores only (7x building, opposed to, say, 12 warpgates), and I sink minerals into cannons. 5 stargates completely drain 6x gases given non-stop production and air upgrades.

[myk777]

How would you know if you have really enough workers on the mineral line and when is it time to stop making workers and / or you need to open up a third expo??

Aside from re-rallying are there any other tips to help with improve gameplay to help macro better?

[Maynarde]

Originally Posted by myk777

How would you know if you have really enough workers on the mineral line and when is it time to stop making workers and / or you need to open up a third expo??

Aside from re-rallying are there any other tips to help with improve gameplay to help macro better?

You have enough workers on the line when there's 3 workers on each patch and 3 in each gas. That is saturated, possibly over, 2 on each patch is ok. If you over saturate, send a chunk to the new expansion by boxing say half of them and shift clicking on the icons in the control group to fine tune the number of workers you want to send. Tough to explain without images or showing in person. It's been said earlier, you need to keep your money low but DON'T QUEUE (eg. have 5 marines queue'd up in a barracks) as that's minerals already spent which you could be spending producing out of other structures or expanding or upgrading.

Hotkeying structures and getting into the habit of constantly producing out of them is something you'll get from playing alot of games. Try it out in a custom game against an AI, and compare the game time to how much supply you have. Get into the habit of "tapping" production structures and command centre hotkeys to see if they are producing, then hit the key for the unit you want to create if you see they aren't producing. If you have 3 barracks on one hotkey and when you tap 3 you see they're all dark, then hit "A" 3 times to start training marines at all those structures.

I suggest churning out a whole bunch of customs vs AI, then comparing and contrasting your replays. Keeping a particularly close eye on your main base and noticing when you get supply blocked / forget to use energy / forget to make workers / production structures not producing. If you have the patience and drive to do this, your macro will improve. Big time.

Obviously games against real people are going to be more volatile, and your builds will have to change depending on what you see from your opponent but this suggestion of mine is a good way to get the very basic basics of macro down pat. Then go from there.

Whoops, long winded. Hope this helped man.

[Meatex]

its important to check how many workers you have
some box workers who are mining but usually I ctrl+click the drones which selects all drones on screen and I look to have full three rows minus 1 (when I have both gas geysers going as 2 drones will be hiding inside extractor at any one time)

usually you want to keep making workers as much as possible so I would say until you get a lot better DON't stop making workers. As for timings on your third well there is no golden rule and expansion timings is what the whole game revolves around if you don't die to a early/mid game timing all in.
Try taking a third while putting pressure on so if you usually do an attack when a certain upgrade(s) finish then also drop an expo

[mGGmetaStatic]

when you take your 2nd base send half your workers from your main and DON'T rally workers to the expansion.
with constant worker production they will both be saturated at the same time and you only lose mining time from the first transfer instead of constantly.
Macro is simply build workers and spend your money, as long as you keep an eye on your resources then macro should be the easiest part of the game. micro on the other hand ... :P

[Insidious]

Originally Posted by metaStatic

when you take your 2nd base send half your workers from your main and DON'T rally workers to the expansion.
with constant worker production they will both be saturated at the same time and you only lose mining time from the first transfer instead of constantly.
Macro is simply build workers and spend your money, as long as you keep an eye on your resources then macro should be the easiest part of the game. micro on the other hand ... :P

MetaStatic you got to be carefull when assuming this because this is not necesarily true.. because if you grab probes from your main and send them to your natural.. you loose those resources all at once instead of over time. For instance you transfer 10 probes it takes 15 seconds to rally them thats 15 minerals per probe so you have lost 150 minerals all at once. if you rally your nexus to your natural you loose 15 minerals per probe rallyed and this over time.. so your totall amount of lost minerals is still 150 except it is spread out over time. now if you loose those 150 minerals all at once then you have one less cannon or 1 less stalker if your opponent pushes your base early. yes this is made up in the late game, but these 150 minerals could be the difference between holding a push or loosing to a push in that early game. however if you are oversaturated on your main base then it is wiser to transfer probes so they are minning to full potential.

[Next_rim]

when is it time to stop making workers and / or you need to open up a third expo??

You don't want to saturate more than 3 bases, or your army will lack in numbers. That is, 68-ish workers is optimal. Obviously, if you don't have a 3rd, you don't need to make more than 45-48 workers. I usually box mineral line workers, it should be 2 full rows (2x8=16) and 2-3 on top. Add 6 on gas, and it becomes 22-23 per base, aka full saturation.

Good time for a 3rd base would be around 12-14 minutes in-game timer. Keep in mind, that 3rd base timing depends a lot on map, opponent and overall strategy. Most games are resolved before 3rd bases go up. In fact, a lot of strategies revolve around containment of your opponent on 2 bases, while building your own 3rd.

[PiG]

Boxing workers on minerals constantly is extremely important to check saturation levels. It also helps improve your mouse speed and accuracy as you get used to doing it quickly.

Mineral Saturation:

Up to 16 drones/base = Each drone is 100% efficient
16th-22nd drone/base = each drone is somewhat efficient. probably between 50-80%
22+ drone/base = negligable income bonus

As a Zerg player I believe it is often pointless to go over 18 drones/base as you need extra hatcheries (production) to make use of added income. So you need more bases. Also you usually use a very mobile army and so you might aswell expand aggressively with lower drone saturation (but more efficiency!).

For Terran and Protoss where expansions are more costly and you use less mobile armies going right up to 22workers/base is defintely worthwhile.

General macro tip:

Macro cycle:

I believe playing as each race you should have a set order in which you regularly do all your macro tasks say once every 30 seconds or minute. For zerg it is as follows:

1) Inject,
2) Produce
3) Overlords
4) Creep spread

By always doing these tasks in the same order EVERY single time it allows you to execute them much faster and without wasting brain-power thinking "what am I forgetting?" and having to recite a list in your head. Instead you will train yourself to instinctively always follow the same set macro cycle. Once efficient and can do all this on a 40s (seconds) macro cycle, you can finish all the tasks in 10-15s. This leaves you with 25-30s to scout/micro, build buildings, check saturation and think about strategy. You can get so used to it you instinctively after that 25s is up look back at base and follow your cycle before going back to your other tasks.

An organised general is a good general. :P

Quick Comments

Nemo:

Humm, that will help me with iZerg

[PantlessPete]

Originally Posted by PiG

Macro cycle:

I believe playing as each race you should have a set order in which you regularly do all your macro tasks say once every 30 seconds or minute. For zerg it is as follows:

1) Inject,
2) Produce
3) Overlords
4) Creep spread

By always doing these tasks in the same order EVERY single time it allows you to execute them much faster and without wasting brain-power thinking "what am I forgetting?" and having to recite a list in your head. Instead you will train yourself to instinctively always follow the same set macro cycle. Once efficient and can do all this on a 40s (seconds) macro cycle, you can finish all the tasks in 10-15s. This leaves you with 25-30s to scout/micro, build buildings, check saturation and think about strategy. You can get so used to it you instinctively after that 25s is up look back at base and follow your cycle before going back to your other tasks.

An organised general is a good general. :P

That increased my win rate by a good 10-20%, definitely check it out!

[iM yang]

As Protoss the idea of 'tapping' becomes extremely important. (hotkeying production and tapping the hotkey to see whether you need to keep the building active) As Warpgates cannot queue units near the end of their cooldown it's is hard to get in the habit of producing an army efficiently as Protoss. Any aspiring Protoss player must do their best to have their warpgates on cooldown as much as possible, this includes going up to 2 pylons per warp in when you're at 2 bases and even up to 3 pylons when you get more expansions!

Quick Comments

PiG:

Really good point I stuggle with this when I play P. Always inactive warpgates!