Brood War Micro: Unit Control and Hotkeys

The video is in Bulgarian. This page sums it up in English.

Unit control in StarCraft: Remastered: pathfinding quirks, hotkey use measured in pro replays, Dragoon range vs Siege Tanks, Elevator drops and Zealot bombing.

Try these in your next game

Tick a lesson once you have practised it.

• Aim to make over half of your actions with hotkeys, so you manage buildings and army without spending time on the mouse.
• In PvT research Dragoon range (Singularity Charge) first, to keep Siege Tanks and Marines at a safe distance.
• Use Elevator drops to move Dragoons and Reavers over cliffs on maps without ramps.
• Try Zealot bombing: drop Zealots right on top of sieged tanks so their splash damages their neighbours.
• Send one worker a little ahead of your army to spot enemy units and tank positions in time.
• Don't put Siege Tanks too close to enemy Dragoons: they can die before they finish sieging.
• Review your replays with a tool like BWChart to track your APMAPMActions per minute: how many commands a player gives. Effective APM leaves out spam clicks. and cut empty clicks.

What this episode covers

1. Grast opens episode 4: microMicroControlling individual units in a fight: focus fire, pulling back hurt units, spreading out. and unit control in StarCraft: Remastered.
2. A video shows the pathfinding problems of units such as the Dragoon.
3. BWChart is introduced for replay analysis: APM and hotkey use.
4. In hero vs Bisu, more than half of a top player's actions turn out to be hotkeys.
5. NaDa vs Bisu shows control groupsControl groupsCtrl + a number key saves the selected units or buildings to that key; press it to select them again, twice to jump the camera there. Up to 12 units per group. for Factories and the ComSat Station.
6. A replay of the Spanish Protoss Zelotito vs July, with a mention of Zelotito's time in the Korean clan Akuta.
7. The main analysis: Snow vs moto, a PvT on Longinus, a three-player map without ramps.
8. Why Dragoon range matters against Siege Tanks in Siege ModeSiege ModeSiege Tanks deploy into stationary artillery with long range and heavy splash damage, but they can't move until they unsiege..
9. The Elevator dropElevator dropFerrying units over a cliff with a Shuttle or Dropship, trip after trip, where there is no ramp.: a Shuttle ferrying Dragoons and Reavers over cliffs.
10. Snow's Reaver and Shuttle control, and Zealot bombing against grouped Siege Tanks.
11. A short look at NaDa vs YellOw on a map with four mineral patches of 2000 each.

Test yourself

4 quick questions on this episode.

Questions this episode answers

Full summary

Episode 4 is all about micro: controlling units well enough to make up for the game's own clumsy unit AI. It is for beginners and intermediate players who want to see why the keyboard, hotkeys and unit movement decide fights.

Grast starts with the engine itself, inherited from Warcraft II, and shows the famous pathfinding problems of units like the Dragoon. With BWChart, a replay analysis tool, he then measures APM and hotkey use in pro games (hero vs Bisu, NaDa vs Bisu and the Spanish Protoss Zelotito vs July) and shows that more than half of a top player's actions go through hotkeys.

The second half breaks down a PvT between Snow (Protoss) and moto (Terran) on Longinus, a map without ramps. Grast covers the worker split, why Dragoon range (Singularity Charge) has to come first, Siege Tank positioning and dodging fire, and the Elevator drop, a Shuttle shuttling units over cliffs. He finishes with Snow's famous Reaver and Shuttle control and Zealot bombing, where Zealots dropped onto sieged tanks make the tanks' splash hit each other.

Players mentioned

Keep learning

• EP 05: Brood War Micro II: Mutalisks, Magic Box and Lurkers
• Micro Arena: train click precision and speed
• How do you stack up against the pros?