When you have a group, say it is all marines and marauders, going to wipe out a protoss base, and you highlight all your troops and click attack and then click one specific enemy unit, and all your forces attack that one together, that is focus firing?
To make things easier, use 3 hotkeys for your army. Ghosts and such can have a special hotkey for easy EMP acess, and the other hotkeys are for your army. Personally I'm using 1 and 3 for my army. If I have a ground force of the same 2 units, I'll only split them into two groups. Though, I'm having 1 for all my units, but if I ever need to make a nice concave, I'll just hit 3 and move a few forces. Works really well! If I'm doing a drop, I'll set the stuff in the dropship to a hotkey and the drop itself to 3. If you don't use hotkeys, or use one only, try double clicking on a unit type (or ctrl + click) all those units will be selected in your army and you can easily focus down the units in your opponents army that are weak against what you've selected.
In SC2, they made it soooo much easier to group things, that macroing is 10x easier, no joke. Anyway, group your whole army into one hotkey, say 1. Use tab to go through each of your unit types. Focus fire is basically, having your units selected, hold shift, right click on the targets you want dead in order.
A problem with this is if you miss the unit you want to kill your units will move to that point instead of attacking. I usually press 'a' and then the unit I want to attack. In Starcraft 1 you could attack one unit and then shift + a to instruct who to kill next. In Starcraft 2 it seems that after the first unit has been killed the shift + a doesn't focus down the next enemy....I'm having problems with this. Have I missed something obvious?
I always use Attack mode, A and click on mini map, when i am closer and need to micro i will select hotkey groups 1 for whole army or 2 spellcasters, and or indicidually select units to focus fire or snipe out a building or unit.
I see all this tips about left-click, shift-click, A TAB double click etc etc. I'm completly new to this type of game and just started 2 days ago with SC2 (in an earlyer topic I was convinced to buy the game, and they where right ). Where can I find a decent list for all the "clicking and controlling" options for a complete noob as me? For now I'm playing the campaign, but I wanne get used to the best and fastest way to control my units in preparation for multi-playing.
Tips for new players The "Starcraft" brand attracts some pretty hardcore and competitive players, so often times advice is given which is focused on people who are already playing ranked online matches. For someone new to RTS's, but who wants to avoid habits that will slow them down later, I advise the following: 1. Learn Hotkeys and use them. In the bottom right corner is all the buttons you can click such as "attack" or "move" or special abilities like "Siege Mode". Each of these things you can click has a pre-set hotkey too. So instead of clicking attack and then click on the unit you want it to kill, you can hit "A" and and then click the unit you want it to kill. It's WAY faster. The same can be said for making SCV's with the S key, and every other ability you use often. 2. Complete the single player "Challenge modes". The campaign is a good story, but many of the units you get in singleplayer are not in league matches. To get ready for online, you can complete the "challenge modes" which appear as a button on the singler player tab when you log-in. These are specifically designed to prepare you for online play by making you defend against getting rushed, use the best counter-units, and micro-manage your troops. These challenge modes are actually really difficult to get a "Gold" rating on, so don't feel bad if you can't get a good rating on some of them. Practice makes perfect. 3. Play online matches. Nothing prepares you more for online than online. Just play play play play. You will lose matches... a lot. Everyone does. The best players in the world have lost hundreds. If you push away the keyboard in frustration after a loss, you won't play enough matches to get better. 4. Consider watching commentators like Day9 at http://day9tv.blip.tv/?sort=custom;date=;view=archive;user=day9tv;nsfw=dc;s=posts;page=1 or users like HD, Huskey, and Crota on youtube. They do commentaries of high-level matches and by watching these matches you can pick up on tricks and tips the high-level players do. Be warned that this is really after you've got all the basics down and have played tons of matches, otherwise the strategy just won't work for you. Hope that helps. -Suzina
Ok thanks, that are some really usefull tips, will definitly use them. About grouping of units, is the best way of grouping "per type". So group all the Marines under "1", all the Marauders under "2" etc etc?. Or is a combination of types better to group under a hotkey?
I usually make my infantry and their Medivacs in 1, any mech I have in 2, and offensive air units in 3. My unit production buildings are all in 4 and I just have to tab through them. All my Orbital Commands are in 5.
I just drag across to select the entire army and shift right click whatever you want killed in the order you want killed. This is the best strategy in my opinion, unless you like hotkeys and such.
