To be honest, I am a little late with my post, I intended to do this yesterday but got lazy and instead decided to just play Brood War all the time I had free. However, I guess this is a good indication of just how much I am enjoying the process.
As of yesterday I think I was 9-23ish on ICCup.
Everything feels fresh. Mistakes do not bother me as I have no real standard to set myself yet, and getting to grips with the mechanical differences between SC2 and BW is surprisingly fun.
To prepare myself for this, I have been re-reading Ver's excellent 'How to Improve' write-up and watching a lot of Afreeca Terrans in my downtime playing. In terms of build or strategy, I'm of the opinion that postponing this until I get more comfortable with the game is a solid idea. The downside is that my games at this stage look kinda wonky. I am basically just trying to spend my money and not get blocked, adding on production and stuff by touch and feeling my way around the economy, and trying to (horribly) imitate people I watch on stream.
All this aside, the sloppiness and generally not having a clue don't bother me, I have a lot of time spare to dedicate to this, so I will take it slow and gradually improve myself.
I guess I should give a little run-down in how I am hotkeying my things at this stage. If there are any glaring problems, I'm sure Team Liquid denizens will let me know.
Thanks to Teamliquid and Day9's early BW Podcasts (really amazing stuff) I have read and listened a little bit on how Terrans utilize Brood War hotkeys. I have to say it looks a lot more fluid than SC2, where everything generally stays 'as is' throughout the game. My current layout is somewhat similar to my SC2 layout, with a few changes. The basic skeleton looks like this;
Past a point, my CC hotkeys become obsolete and are dedicated to Units. My Barracks hotkey also tend to become a Unit hotkey.
I use camera location hotkeys past a point to make workers, and I use 4/5/6 depending on match-up as a poor-mans production camera hotkey. In this way I would double-tap one of these keys, make units, and rally to a point by using this in conjunction with my camera location hotkeys.
So far, it feels pretty nice. I watched a video of a Terran using camera locations for his production and using that plus a rally camera made re-rallying look incredibly fast. It might be worth doing in the late game, but I'm not really sure at the minute, and have more important things to focus on in my play.
Here are some of my first wins against the different match-ups.
So I guess this is how I am looking at the minute. Its been fun and I'm enjoying myself. I think my next blog will be written when I have some solid builds under my belt and a little more practice. Hopefully I will have gotten a little better by then.
I also am being somewhat coached through the experience, which is really great. It cuts down on the amount of information I need to sift through myself and I can get tips and pointers a long the way. Thanks, Ringo, you're a star.
I always found that these control keys worked for me: 1-4: units -> make sure to constantly change -> 1 for marines, 2 for medics then move medics eventually to 4 as you add more marines. If you have tanks and vessels, it should be something like 1-3 -> MnM, 4 -> tanks, 5 -> vessels (or variations). This is pretty dynamic and changes with the game, units etc... 5: main cc 6: rax early on then change to exp cc 7: third base cc (can use camera locations later on if you want) 8-9-0 all comsat stations, really important to do this!
As for the camera keys, I use F2 for production facilities (I try to keep them together), F3 for expansion entrance and F4 for new locations to rally them (basically, F2 click rax F4 click location and do same for other facilities). Agree otherwise. Just learn to get comfortable with the game before diving into builds. You can even just 2 rax a ton of games just to get used to the way things work lol.
I watch a lot of BW, but rarely play -- why is it that Terran (and Protoss) generally don't hotkey their unit production buildings? Like in mau5mat's example above, why not key up 4-7 as four Barracks? I imagine for a SK Terran build in TvZ, it makes sense to keep the M&M's pumping
Even when I watch progamers, I see them leaving the battle site to go back to their main, then click/produce out of each building one-by-one... Like Zerg usually hotkey the hatcheries...
On May 28 2015 05:02 prech wrote: Interesting, thanks for sharing!
I watch a lot of BW, but rarely play -- why is it that Terran (and Protoss) generally don't hotkey their unit production buildings? Like in mau5mat's example above, why not key up 4-7 as four Barracks? I imagine for a SK Terran build in TvZ, it makes sense to keep the M&M's pumping
Even when I watch progamers, I see them leaving the battle site to go back to their main, then click/produce out of each building one-by-one... Like Zerg usually hotkey the hatcheries...
well, it really depends. I've been pros hotkey 3-4 rax then cycle through them but once you have 8+ rax, factories and 2-3 ports late game, you can't hotkey all those plus have space for units and comsat. Late game, you're usually looking at 5-6 units and have 2-3 comsat stations at least, that's already 7-9 groups. I think protoss is the same idea as well.
Yes, the hotkeys are a lot less set in stone than in SC2 I feel, for instance that layout of mine is just a general idea, in TvZ I think it's better to hotkey the first 3 barracks to 4/5/6 to allow myself to macro without having to watch my barracks.
So I should, at some point in late-game, have camera location hotkey over production, and another to a rally location, and then use 4/5/6 as additional army hotkeys? Interesting, thanks.
Yes, late game, your army will grow exponentially so you need more groups so having 4/5/6 for additional army hotkeys is a good idea. As for camera locations, that's what I do and I know pros do it quite a bit too. I would say go for it but do what feels comfortable to you in the end
f2/f3 for rax and fac/starport respectively, then f4 for your army rally point. unless you're zerg, then 5,6,7,8,9 for hatches and f2 for hatch groupings, then f4 for your main rally and f3 for your ancillary rally (since generally as zerg you will have two primary rally points). zerg is a fun race, you start to love the 12 unit max control when you have like 300 units and only 4 hotkeys of military forces. BW is so awesome, you'll start to love the "limitations" when you realize it differentiates the gods from the noobs. also, the first time that you hold off an attack from a force that "counters" yours and outnumbers you 2 to 1, you'll realize why BW is so much better than sc2.
also, since you're playing bw now, here'sand fpvod of iloveoov (a sick terran) vs julyzerg (one of the best zergs EVER [probably my personal favorite])
On May 28 2015 05:45 Endymion wrote: f2/f3 for rax and fac/starport respectively, then f4 for your army rally point. unless you're zerg, then 5,6,7,8,9 for hatches and f2 for hatch groupings, then f4 for your main rally and f3 for your ancillary rally (since generally as zerg you will have two primary rally points). zerg is a fun race, you start to love the 12 unit max control when you have like 300 units and only 4 hotkeys of military forces. BW is so awesome, you'll start to love the "limitations" when you realize it differentiates the gods from the noobs. also, the first time that you hold off an attack from a force that "counters" yours and outnumbers you 2 to 1, you'll realize why BW is so much better than sc2.
also, since you're playing bw now, here'sand fpvod of iloveoov (a sick terran) vs julyzerg (one of the best zergs EVER [probably my personal favorite])
here's how i always used hotkeys and camera locks.
Early Game: f2/f3/f4 = bases 1 = scout/units 2 = building worker/units 3 = Rax 4 = Factory 5 = Main CC 6 = Natural CC 7 = Third CC 8/9/0 = comsats
Mid-late game = f2 = production area f3 = rally point f4 = misc. 1-5(6/7 if needed)=units rest = comsats
a good way to rally units with the f-keys is practicing f2, click rax, f3, right click rally, f2, click next rax, f3, right click rally. when you get really fast, you can do like 9 rax with factorys and starports in like 3 seconds
EPT
