StarCraft II: Micromanagement 101

A lot of people get scared when the ominous specter of micromanagement in a real-time strategy game is invoked. It sounds a lot harder than it is, though, and these simple tips can elevate your game. In the interests of clarity I'm going to focus on Terran units here, but the concepts are just as easily applied to other races.

Micromanagement refers to giving units tactical orders in combat in order to maximize their effectiveness. If you're more concerned with macromanagement -- optimizing your resource gathering and unit production -- check out yesterday's Macro 101 tips.

(Before moving on, please note that the above pictured tactic of blocking a chokepoint with perma-cloaked Dark Templar on "hold ground" with Immortals and Colossi backing them up is total hax, and should not be tried at home without leet supervision.)

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Understand hotkeys and unit selection! This is real basic, but remember that you can hotkey and select units in several ways:

• Shift-click (or shift-drag) will add/remove units to/from the current selection
• Control-click (or double-click) will add/remove all units of the same type to/from the current selection
• Control-[#] will set that number to the current selection
• Shift-[#] will add the current selection to that number
• Double-tap [#] zooms the view to that group's location

That's how things work, but how do you make StarCraft II's unit management work for you? Easy. Consider the following situations, and the most efficient way to select or hotkey the units you want:

New units have been built and are hanging out at their rally point. You want to add all the marines and marauders to your infantry group (1), all the medivacs and ravens to a secondary support group (2), and have them join your main forces at a forward position. Just control-click a marine, then hold shift-control and click a marauder, then press shift-1 and right-click on your primary army on the minimap. You've just bulked up your infantry group and sent the new troops to the front line without giving any orders to your existing forces which may well be actively engaging the enemy. After they move out a few steps, drag-select the still-stationary medivacs and ravens, hit shift-2, and right-click one of the newly departed infantry. The ships will follow and support the ground-pounders on their way to the front, and they're part of hotkey group 2 for further orders.

This sounds like a lot, but the above sequence is only five mouse clicks, two presses of number keys, and a little bit of dancing across shift and control. With practice, it'll come as naturally as queuing your workers back to mineral patches following build orders (which you've been doing, right?).

If you accidentally hotkey an SCV or two with your combat forces -- and you will, trust me -- just find their icon in the bottom-center part of the UI and control-click it, then press control-[#] to reset that hotkey group to the same set of units minus the SCVs.

Know when not to attack-move! You should be giving attack-move orders (press [a] followed by left-clicking the ground) most of the time so that your units engage any enemies in their line of sight along the way. However, there are situations where regular moves, where units do not engage enemies even if fired upon, are appropriate. Consider this situation:

Your marine/marauder group is trying to break an enemy chokepoint. If you give a general attack-move order, or even queued attack orders (via holding shift and giving multiple orders), the front-most marines will stop moving and start shooting as soon as they're at max range, preventing the rest of your army from engaging if there's not room to maneuver around the firing marines. With big armies in tight quarters -- an extremely common scenario in StarCraft II -- this can mean that only five or six marines out of your 30+ army are actively firing at any one time. If you give a short move order, just enough to get most of your army within firing range, and then a stop order, you'll be much better off. You may lose one or two in the advance, but having 25 gauss rifles spitting death instead of five is well worth the tradeoff.

Hotkey your casters! It should be obvious, but a few well-managed casters can be worth twice their weight in gas. A properly-placed point defense drone from a Raven can save hundreds if not thousands of damage to your forces. A well-timed ghost EMP can do more damage than five battlecruisers. Casters are the most intimidating units to StarCraft newbies, with their high cost, low health, and poor or nonexistent attacks. If you hotkey them, though, dropping that PD drone is as easy as pressing [2][d] and left-clicking to place it. With the Terrans, I find it particularly effective to group my Ravens with the medivacs in the support group that follows my army around. The game automatically puts the Ravens as the default selection when you press the hotkey, and it saves the hassle of moving the two sets of ships separately since you generally want them all in the same area anyway.

Retreat injured units! This isn’t terribly applicable to infantry since they’re inexpensive and die too fast anyway, but by the time you get to midgame it becomes well worth it to keep your expensive units alive if possible. The easiest way is to keep an eye on the bottom-center of your UI and left-click any portrait that turns orange (this selects that unit on its own) and right-click in the opposite direction of the bad guys. Again, this seems like a lot to do in the middle of an already chaotic battle, but it's just two mouse clicks.

This may not be possible if you’re facing a focus-firing opponent with faster units than you have, and you may have more pressing needs than worrying about saving a couple hundred minerals by saving a damaged Thor, but it can be useful. Note that units given attack-move orders will prioritize whatever is closest, so you don’t even have to move a unit very far to get it out of harm’s way -- oftentimes it can even stay within weapons range.

Kite enemy melee! There are specific circumstances where this isn't possible at all, but effective kiting (keeping outside of enemy attack range with constant movement) can overcome truly silly odds. If there are enemy Zealots attacking your marines, why are you standing there and taking it? Why not move the one being targeted while your other marines fill the zealots with lead? You can do the same with Zerglings and Ultralisks, and fast air units like Banshees and Mutalisks can pull off similar tactics. Keep in mind that queuing several move orders in a rough circle can make this a less click-intensive task.

Move into the vortex! It seems counter-intuitive, but the Protoss Mothership’s devastating Vortex ability is easily overcome with a little micro. The Vortex takes any unit within its swirling maelstrom out of the battle; they can neither attack nor be attacked. Good Protoss players will use this to split your army in half and destroy it piecemeal. While you can’t directly counter the Vortex itself, you can send the non-Vortexed half of your forces into it, safe from harm. Since all Vortexed units pop out at the same time, you can resume the fight with even odds. Note that this tactic is not similarly applicable to the Terran Tactical Nuke ability.