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Move
You should only use this command when you are sure the enemy will not ambush your
forces or when you don't care if your force take any damage from any enemy units they meet along the way, i.e.
if you're trying to retreat your troops or move past enemy defenses to get to their workers
Note: right-clicking on an area (not unit or building)
also issues the move command.
Follow
If you want to have fun you can tell the first unit in
the conga line to follow the unit at the at the rear of the line, making them travel in circles.
You can get units to travel in circles around objects such as buildings, lakes, and high ground.
Although this may not hurt the enemy directly, they certainly may die of laughter.
Following is useful in scouting. This is especially the case when you want to follow a unit you cannot
attack. For example, if you have a Firebat and you see a Dropship you want to follow, you can order
the Firebat to follow the Dropship by right-clicking on it. You may receive a message telling you it cannot be attacked
but the unit will still follow the enemy. You can then direct a real force towards the area.
If you have an Overlord or Observer out scouting and you come across another enemy Overlord, you can follow it to see
where it goes giving you some indication to where the Overlord came from. This can be invaluable near the beginning
of the game when you're trying to find your opponent's base.
When fighting cloaked units, it's very important to have detecting units nearby, but most
detector units are slower than the offensive units that they're escorting. By having your
fighting force follow the detector, you can ensure that your units won't stray too far.
Stop
Attack and Attack-Move
In the case of buildings with attack buttons such as the Protoss Photon Cannon, Terran Missile Turret,
Zerg Sunken Colony and Spore Colony, the buildings will either attack the target you click on, or
will give you a message indicating that they cannot attack the target.
If you select Attack and click on an area, rather than a unit, the forces will
"attack-move" to the area you clicked on, automatically engaging any enemy units or buildings that come into their range
on the way to their destination. They will not react to any units that they are unable to attack unless
they are fired upon. For example, if you attack-move some Firebats to a destination and they come under
attack by enemy flying units they will run, but if they spot an enemy Shuttle, they
will ignore it and continue on to their destination.
Attack-move is by far the safest way to move units from
one location to another. If you use the move command instead, your forces might walk
through an enemy ambush, and instead of returning fire they will continue on
while they are being attacked. This is only desirable in certain instances better
explained in the move command section. Basically, attack-move can be considered the
same as a "search and destroy" order, and is the easiest way to clear out towns and
allow your troops to deal with unexpected enemies.
Right Clicking on an enemy unit is the same
as selecting the Attack command and clicking on the unit. If, however, you miss the intended target and click on the
ground rather instead, you will end up issuing a move command. Avoid using
right-click to designate attacks on fast, small and hard to select units such as Zergling. You will find
that it is a lot easier to select Attack and click on an area near them to get your forces to
attack-move, rather than trying to select an individual enemy.
Use right click when you will have no problem click on the enemy unit, or if you want to explicitly target
a specific unit, such as a High Templar that's about to use Psionic Storm.
Try to use attack-move (via clicking on the surrounding area) rather than targeting an enemy unit, unless
you absolutely intend to kill the targeted unit at any cost. A common problem
is when you select a group of units and tell them to attack an enemy unit some distance away. If that enemy unit
is killed, all the units that you told to attack it will stop, since they no longer have a target.
Since you won't receive any warning that they've lost their target, you might not realize that those
reinforcements that you were waiting for are still sitting halfway across the battlefield.
This problem will not happen if you tell the units to attack-move by selecting the ground
surrounding the area you want to move to, rather than selecting an enemy unit.
Hot key: M
Move tells a unit to move to the destination that you click on no matter what they run into. If the enemy
starts attacking them, they will continue on their way taking any damage without responding. This command means
essentially, "Go there no matter what". This command should be used very carefully-- if you tell a group
of units to move to a location, and they are ambushed by enemy units, they will continue towards the destination
rather than responding to the attack. This can quickly lead to a massive slaughter of your forces if you
are not careful. They will walk by Bunkers, run straight into and by Siege Tanks, or anything else that
crosses their path. They will not stop unless they run into some physical barrier such as water,
high ground and so on.
You can tell a unit to follow another unit by selecting a unit, then right clicking on the unit that you want
it to follow. You can then tell another unit to follow the unit that was told to follow the first unit.
(Still with me?). You can then daisy chain a group of units, telling each unit to follow another one,
until you have a long group following one unit. Then you need only to control the main leader of the line
to direct the strung out targets to their destination. This can allow you to control over 12 units (the selection
limit) at one time.
Hot key: S
The Stop command tells a unit to stop where they are as soon as possible, ignoring and canceling whatever previous
command they were given (provided you are not queuing commands).
Stop is useful when you have a group of moving units that you want to stop and open fire immediately. For example,
if you have a group of Marines on move orders, and they encounter an enemy squad, it's faster to issue a Stop command
than it is to order them to Attack an area.
This comes in handy when your forces are about to run into some serious defenses that you may not have
previously known about-- you don't really want your units to retreat where they will continue to
take damage nor do you want them to continue where they will come under even more fire.
Hot key: A
The Attack Command instructs a unit to attack a target which may be friendly or not.
The unit will move to and attack the unit or building you clicked on if it is able to.
If it is unable to attack that target, possibly because it is
unable to attack air units, or for some other reason, you will receive a message indicating
that problem to you. You won't, however, be warned about any obstacles the unit
may come across along the way such as enemy units, rivers, high ground and so on.
It is up to you to make sure your forces reach their destination. You will find that
careful control and Waypoints can help you in this task.