StarCraft II: Macro 101

As I make my way through StarCraft II, a bunch of less-than-obvious tricks help me get the most out of my economy. How many of these do you already know? The pros out there will laugh at the obviousness of it all (to them), but these simple techniques will improve your game in both single- and multiplayer without requiring the twitch skills of a Korean tween. I focus on Terran units for the sake of simple examples, but these are applicable to all three factions. Getting your macro (in RTS parlance, managing your resource collection and unit production) in order is the first step to galactic dominance.

Hotkey your command center and rally it! I use control group 4 by preference. Get used to hitting [4][s] whenever you hear the “SCV ready” prompt. The joke is that StarCraft gameplay boils down to who can build SCVs the fastest. While trite and a vast oversimplification, there’s a lot of truth to it. Setting your command center’s rally point to a nearby mineral patch means that every worker that comes out automatically starts harvesting.

Queue your SCV orders! The easiest way to erect buildings without losing more worker time than necessary is the following:

1. Grab an SCV just after it deposits its load of minerals
2. Press your building hotkeys (i.e. [b][b] for a barracks)
3. Place the building -- the SCV makes its way to the construction site
4. Hold shift and right-click back on your mineral patch

This makes your worker go right back to harvesting as soon as he’s done building. Once you’re used to doing this, it takes almost no more time than a regular build order and means you won’t have idle workers sitting around.

Hotkey your production buildings and rally them! This is much less painful now that you can select multiple buildings simultaneously. By preference, I use control group 3. If I’m rocking two barracks in a typical campaign setup (one with a tech reactor for advanced infantry units and the other with a reactor for double marine production), I reflexively hit [3][e][a][a] whenever I hear a unit being built. The [3] selects my barracks, [e] starts a medic at the tech lab-equipped one, and [a][a] double-builds marines at the reactor. Four keystrokes, and you’ve got another wave of dudes on their way. A quick [3] followed by a right-click sets all your production buildings’ rally points, making it easy to reinforce the current front.

Don’t float resources! This one is a little more advanced, but it’s the biggest one. Resources in your bank do nothing for you. Turn them into units already! If you find yourself with 300 minerals in the bank, you’re doing it wrong. Get another barracks up. Start those upgrades. Get more supply depots down. In multiplayer and skirmish games, there’s a whole section of the after-action report dedicated to showing you what your resource balance over the course of the match was. High is bad.

Don’t queue units if you can help it! This one grows out of the previous one. Units in the queue -- that is, not currently being built but next in line -- are the same as floated resources. Don’t queue your units in the same building; build more production facilities. Being able to dump out 10 marines in the build time of a single one is about as awesome as it sounds. Get used to building a lot of unit producers. It’s not uncommon to see highly ranked players with five or more of their primary recruitment structure by the midgame. Learn from them.

I know it's easier said than done, and I still have to remind myself to follow these guidelines in every single match I play. Nonetheless, it's absolutely worth it. The first time you really focus on these things and all of a sudden realize that you have a massive army waiting for orders that you didn't even know you had, you'll understand.

The campaign is an excellent place to practice these skills. Even though it’s quite possible to stomp through normal difficulty without doing any of this, the more ingrained you can make these habits the easier everything becomes. Good luck!