How do I increase APM?

[Evan_]

I often find myself doing badly late game in maps like Roanoke and Syrtis Major because the other player is able to micro way more efficiently and eventually overpower with higher tech/spam.

Thus I set out to increase my APM. I have a couple of questions:

What are some of the things/hotkeys/techniques that help APM?
What are some good maps for practicing speed with air, naval, and land?
What are some techniques that require a lot of APM from the opponent?
When is micro'ing with eco more/less important than with units?
Are split windows/dual monitor setup practical in this game?
Would you recommend any UI mods that aid in APM?

[NapSpan]

I played Starcraft 2 and this game for a long time and from what I tried to improve APM, the best solution is drink coffe like water, talk with your drug provider to take some snow and put some candles to Lucifer...
Also you must play 5x5, that small shits someone call maps are good to improve micro since map is too small to do any other thing rater than spam facts and units.

[ZLO_RD]

How much apm do you have?
You should rather focus on apm efficiency, multitasking and map awarness.
40 APM is enought to get in top 100 for sure.
Best players usually have around 60-120 apm.
But keep in mind that we don't have good tools to mesure apm so numbers can be very inacurate (select 20 factories, queue 20 units with 4 clicks = 5 clicks but will count as 400 actions, but also all selection and map movement actions not count at all)

Edit: use hotbuild (press f1 in game to setup hotkeys)
If that will be not enought you can even make custom hotkeys by editing settings file

Use templates (there is a tutorial on youtube)
There are factory templates as well
Try to play zoomed out

Choice between micro and macro is kinda obvius, if there is alot of value in your army you should micro it, but you often can just click retreat and macro in that time.

Economy managment is very important cause unit controll is kinda easy in FA (cause units shoot while move, no need for alot of baby sitting)

[RealityCheck]

Something useful - how to create keyboard shortcuts: http://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8230

[biass]

im not sure getting higher tech is a apm issue

look over a replay and watch eco values etc

if you need any hotkeys make a button for manual reclaim so you can spam it

[Lieutenant Lich]

Yeah, I just went with an advice from my old good friend and made many hotkeys (and Suicide Confirmation mod). Q for facs, W - mexes, D - power, T - PD, Y - AA, G - torps. I do not have unit templates for factories but I have building templates, like walled PD, mex + 4 facs, wall sections, 4 mass storage to cap mexes, etc... Those got me higher.

Then there is economy managements. That is something to work on. A trainer will help.

Build orders - very simple to create some build order in one factory, then sequence it up, set others to assist it and done, your spam is rollin' hard. My 2 cents.

[Hawkei]

Click faster... The truth is however that you don't really need it. Better skills worth mastering are anticipation, and awareness. As long as you are giving all your units something to do, and they are not spending time idle, all extra APM is mostly wasted.

I have an app on my computer for measuring APM, which I have running in the background. My typical average APM is about 100 or 120, and this goes up to about 200 during intense play. I don't feel the need to have higher APM than this, as usually I find the issue is in being able to control everything that is going on. Managing an eco, and giving 500 to 1000 units all something to do. Using all my mass, and most of my energy, planning ahead, and understanding what my opponent is trying to do. All this combined is much more of a critical matter - rather than simply focusing on clicking faster...

In short, to get things happening quickly, with no down time, you need to think fast, you need to play instinctively, and execute orders quickly. Get to know the Build menu, and hotbuild. Learn all the hotkeys. Being able to use both hands and all your control devices will increase your APM.

[JaggedAppliance]

Your APM will increase as you learn more about the game. You'll have to spend less time thinking about what you should do and more time just doing stuff.

[Petricpwnz]

kinda like that

[Blodir]

Thanks to nocaps for this graphic of my current hotkey setup


Besides that, usually apm comes with experience. From my experience usually people are more limited by deciding where to move their attention, rather than actual speed of execution. If you want to practice execution speed a fun trick is to go to a custom 1v1 with a friend and play it on +2 speed.