Practical unit handling

There are many strategy and unit guides around, which is good reference for a new player.

However, I often feel stumped during the game how to manage units on a practical level. Everything happens very quickly and I may have a tactical plan, but I cannot implement it because I'm too clunky with the UI. Well, not UI, but how to get my units to do the things I want.

I usually have a factory rally point which brings units near the front line. I use autogroups to have glaives in group 1, rockos in 2 and so forth. This is handy, because new units get added automatically to the group and my army stays constant with a influx of new units replacing the dying ones. I can quickly react to things by choosing autogroup 1 (the glaives) to intercept raiders approaching my rocko-line (autogroup 2). The problems are: i) factory rally point often results in a clump of units, which never reach the rally point and are thus not added to the autogroup: they just sit at the rally point doing nothing until I intervene. ii) I cannot do specialized tasks, like making a two special teams of units that would circle and flank the enemy. Any quick autogroup command and the special teams forget their original orders.

How do experienced players handle their units on a practical level? Do you use autogroups and factory rally points? How do you avoid the problems I presented? Or do you use special groups with CTRL+number, but how do you replenish the group with new units without ending up in a management hell? Or do you do use the guard-command, like selecting a single powerful unit, putting him to do some tasks and assign some units to guard him.

How do you manage the multitasking?

I'm not using autogroup. For me CTRL+X/Z is the way to go, though I rebound CTRL Z to CTRL Y, because Y and Z are swapped on qwertz keyboards.

These hotkeys select all units of the currently selected type(s), that is if you currently have a Glaive and a Rocko selected it selects Glaives and Rockos. CTRL X does this for any visible units (as in: "on your screen"), CTRL Z does this for units all over the map. This is essential for the "replenish a group with new units" problem you mention.

Usually CTRL+Number is used after CTRL+X/Z selections, especially for units behind enemy lines as they usually require the most micro.

For my factory waypoint I use a Fight-command to get builders to auto-assist and other units to engage enemies they encounter on their way. Note that I do not set my waypoint to the very front, this is just for when unexpected things happen on their travel.

To stop units from piling up too much, I usually check on front units every now and then to draw new custom formations or engage targets and while doing that I add the idle units using above hotkeys. On some occations I adjust the factory waypoint.

That said, I only play team games.

Very interesting. How do you disable autogroup? I have all units already autogrouped now from past games...

I put my current main factory to 9, my com to 0 - the right side of 9.
8 are some constructors

My com almost always is high priority builder (good for storages) and micro-managed early or guarding my factory / building something special.

The factory itself is low-priority - the frame and surrounding nanos inherit this.
Mexes, solar and wind are high priority by default.

1 constructor is increasing my energy, only if the priority factory builder doesn't need it, nothing else has high priority.

1 is my main army. 2-7 are single silo units, berthas, or different types (air, etc)

There is an autogroup option to immediately add units from factory, rather than waiting for them to stop moving post-construction, that may help for using autogroups.

Also, Sotha781, are you using line-move (that is, clicking and dragging a line)? Zero-K is largely designed around that UI feature, as units cannot shoot through each other, so using that to move units is fairly necessary.

quote: factory rally point often results in a clump of units, which never reach the rally point and are thus not added to the autogroup: they just sit at the rally point doing nothing until I intervene.

As Shadowfury333 noted, there is an option in the settings menu that solves this problem. Set it and units will be joined to their autogroup when built rather than when reaching their rally point.

I'm not exactly the person you want to emulate, but I do use autogroup (and I have it set to "join when built"). I have autogroups for raiders, riots, skirms, assaults, artillery, and aa.

I also have a couple of group numbers reserved for ad-hoc strike teams. As Saktoth noted, you can take some autogrouped units and put them in a different group without affecting the rest of the autogrouped units. So my main force will have the different types of units each in their dedicated autogroups so I can retreat all my glaives while advancing all my rockos, for example. But a separate combined force of glaives and warriors might be together in a different group headed off to exploit a gap in my neighbor's front.

Even with groups and autogroups, using ctrl-x / box selection is still a great way to get THESE UNITS RIGHT HERE to go KILL THAT THING RIGHT THERE RIGHT NOW.

Because I use autogroups, I rarely use ctrl-z. I can usually select "all of this type of unit" by pressing that unit's group number. Doing that also doesn't select the units that were moved to an ad-hoc stike team, which is good, because I don't have Saktoth's APM to fix my mistakes. :) Still, ctrl-z is insanely handy and you should get your mind and your fingers used to it; even with autogroups, there's often a time when I want to select all of SOMETHING that isn't already grouped.

quote: my army stays constant with a influx of new units replacing the dying ones

Bear in mind that this can lead to trouble, too. Adding a unit to a losing squad just means you're going to lose that unit as well. You may want to pull the squad back so that it's not dying, wait for enough reinforcements to arrive, and then attack in strength. Autogroup will help with that, too, since the reinforcements will automatically catch up with the squad while it's retreating and rallying.

quote: I cannot do specialized tasks, like making a two special teams of units that would circle and flank the enemy. Any quick autogroup command and the special teams forget their original orders.

If I'm understanding you, then the solution to your problem is to assign the special teams to their own ad-hoc group numbers. Then when you select the autogrouped group and give a command, the special teams will not be selected and will retain their previous orders.

As long as autogroup doesn't preserve assigned groups by default, I think it can be default on. I know that sounds like a weird reasoning, but considering that unbinding autogroups isn't the best documented feature (alt+key to left of '1' ('`' on QWERTY keyboards), btw), having autogroups from the previous game would impose it on you even if you just played around with it, or accidentally hit alt when you meant to hit ctrl when hitting a number.

For me, it is most difficult to keep track of what is auto-grouped and to find the use-age description in-game.

Does my auto-group also include the factory? somewhat annoying, as a move order would reset a jump (jump fac) or patrol (planes).

I can tell you that by default, autogroup settins IS preserved, since all my autogroup numbers have always been preserved without my even knowing that there was a setting for this.

I use ctrl-z, select all on screen and a lot of line moving.