How to micro a big army?

[iounas]

Lets say you have some stalkers, sentries and templars among other units..
How to blink somewhere and then use storm and sentry shield?
When I get in a fight I have a brain meltdown and dont use anything..
How do good players do it? Have everything on different hotkey or select units individually-that is very hard cause all mesh together.
I think zerg is the easiest to play so far..

[Rain[sun]]

You must not have played SC1, it was 10x harder.
Now you can select all casters of a type and use the spell, and from what I've seen so far, only one does it. Means you can select 10 sentrys and forcefield 10 spots and theyll intelligently all do it at the same time

since theres no cap on the amount of units you can command, hotkeys should be used for casters/blink/production buildings

for example, my nexus is 1 my gateways are 2 and robos 3, then i have stalkers under 5, sentrys under 6 etc.

[Ti.sTou-]

Yeah you must not have played SC1, nor Warcraft 3.
Here is the trick :
First, the casters use intelligently their abilities as Rain commented. Take 10 templars and you can cast 10 different storms in 10 clics. In SC1 you needed to select each and every one of them.
Secondly, you can select all you army and go trough the units with the tab key.
As an example : You have 10 marines 2 siege tanks and vikings.
Select them all, stim pack the marines (T), push the tab key (you will see at the bottom that the group of selected units are highlighted), siege the tanks (E), push the tab key and put you vikings in assault mode(D). All this without even using the mouse !
Plus, if you have different type of units but with the same ability (marines and marauders) they will all be stimpacked at the same time.

So for you example, you can blink the stalkers, push the tab key, cast a few storms, push tab and cast 2 or 3 shields. 3-4 secondes maximum if you know your hotkeys.

Enjoy

[iounas]

Yeah Im new so I dont want to learn it wrong..

I guess tab is fine if you have 2 different units so switch between them but if you have more I guess its bad..

[Ti.sTou-]

Depends,
You can groups units that are similar, let's say all infantry units, or all anti-air units.. You group them with 1,2,3 etc.. and then cycle through them with tab. Possibilities are great.

[Nesreca]

Thanks for the Tab tip Ti.sTou!

[zorminster]

A related question;

If i've got a mixed control group, lets say marine, marauders, and medivac ships.  Is there a button i can hold so that a command is issued only to the active unit type without explicitly selecting them?

EX:

I enter a fight with the Marine/Marauder/Medivac selected and the marauders are my active group.  I want to micro the marauders to the flank, but leave the marines in their auto-attack position; can i hold <<KEY>> down and right click and it will send only the mauraders?

[2g4u]

A related question;

If i've got a mixed control group, lets say marine, marauders, and medivac ships.  Is there a button i can hold so that a command is issued only to the active unit type without explicitly selecting them?

EX:

I enter a fight with the Marine/Marauder/Medivac selected and the marauders are my active group.  I want to micro the marauders to the flank, but leave the marines in their auto-attack position; can i hold <<KEY>> down and right click and it will send only the mauraders?

The simplest way to accomplish this is to always bind different type of units on different key. An example keybind for Terran 1 - CC(s)*, 2 - Unit Production buildings*, 3 - all of your army, 4 - Marauders, 5 - Siege Tanks, 6 - Marines, etc.

*Tab works for buildings, it just circles threw them.

[zorminster]

A related question;

If i've got a mixed control group, lets say marine, marauders, and medivac ships.  Is there a button i can hold so that a command is issued only to the active unit type without explicitly selecting them?

EX:

I enter a fight with the Marine/Marauder/Medivac selected and the marauders are my active group.  I want to micro the marauders to the flank, but leave the marines in their auto-attack position; can i hold <<KEY>> down and right click and it will send only the mauraders?

The simplest way to accomplish this is to always bind different type of units on different key. An example keybind for Terran 1 - CC(s)*, 2 - Unit Production buildings*, 3 - all of your army, 4 - Marauders, 5 - Siege Tanks, 6 - Marines, etc.

*Tab works for buildings, it just circles threw them.

Yea i knew about this, but i'm running out of control groups (i like to use a couple of different attack groups for multi-pronged attacks) so cant afford to control group each unit type.

[chetjan]

The one suggestion I have is to use a lot of hotkeys.

[Rain[sun]]

I dont recommend hotkeying multi-unit armies.
Takes about as much time to select the army since you can select more than 12 units
Its way better to select the army you want to hit each area, and furthermore multipronged attacks should usually be different unit types anyway, like your ground and casters hitting his expo while you have Vikings/prisms/medivacs/mutas hitting his main

If you insist on 2 mirror armies hitting 2 spots, then you just have a lot of hotkeys in your future