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I'm about 40-50% hotkey distribution, but I model my control after Nada (though not my playing style). Nada quite possibly has the fastest reactions with his units, and thats because he's always looking at them. When you double tap your hotkey, it centers your view on the group... which can be pretty damn useful (: I also can't imagine playing Zerg without hotkeying your units... particularly late game. I've often gotten 10 groups of Zerg units, and there is quite simply no way I could quickly move them across without 1a2a3a4a5a6a7a8a9a0a. Granted, my hands are pretty large and I can reach 0a pretty easily, I fail to see how drag selecting could possibly in any sense be any faster.
Early game, when I only have ~3 control groups, I like to keep my production buildings 4-7. Thats really helpful TvZ. Watch some Nada replays, TvZ: he often tries to bull the Z's defenses over with his first group of m&m. More often than not, he fails ( : though interestingly, usually wins the game. It does force the Zerg to rebuild their defenses, slowing them down somewhat), but the point is he always has an army ready to replace it, despite having paid constant attention to his troops. Late game, he'll click on the minimap to go back to his production buildings (assuming he has many units hotkeyed). If you watch the VOD of Nada vs HOT-Forever on Isles of Siren, its really impressive when they switch to FP view of Nada. You see how fast he moves around to macro, despite a spread out base.
I'm rambling.
Anyways, anyone who thinks that 200+ apm isn't helpful, should try to play some long, grueling TvP's.
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btw i must add, in games i want to win i hotkey my hatches which gives me way more time to micro my units.
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On April 15 2004 01:59 Hautamaki wrote:
I'm a toss user of course, so I won't speak for zerg and terran, but for me I think that hotkeys are an inferiour choice to just using your mouse and keyboard shortcuts for 90% of the common applications.
It's far easier for me to click on my minimap than it is to use an Fkey to center on my procution centers. My fingers are too short to reach the Fkeys without moving my whole arm. To do it with my mouse I only need to flick my wrist.
When it comes to actually producing units, I'd much rather click my gateways and then hit z/d/t/k than hit 1 then z then 2 then d and so on. It's way more efficient to do stuff with both hands at once than it is to let one hand sit idle while the other has to move twice as quickly to make up. Obviously, you can use both hands on your keyboard to ameliorate that problem, but is that better? Hell no, then you have to move your whole hand again, twice, there and back, and furthermore you won't have enough hotkeys to run every gate anyways past the early-mid game.
When it comes to controlling armies, you cannot use attack move shortcut when you're selecting your army with hotkeys. Again, it's a waste of hand movement, because you have to press a number then a letter then a number and so forth. It's the same problem as construction, even Progamers don't bother to attack move, they just use right click move. That has a lot of drawbacks though. You waste units and lose the first attack any time you move to a spot that you didnt know the enemy was there. Progamers are fast enough that they can retreat, but even they fuck up and lose stuff occasionally. To me, there's just no sense in it unless you have like 30+ troops that you want to move from one side of the map to the other without actually facing any of his units. How often do you have to do that? Is it worth the extra seconds you wasted setting up your hotkeys? Almost never, I say.
I think that most people use hotkeys just for the hell of it, but there isn't actually any good reason to do so 90% of the time.
Oh no you didn't... NO HE DIDN'T... SOMEBODY TELL ME HE DIDN'T DO WHAT I THINK HE DID... OHHHHH YES HE DID... ITS ON NOW, OH ITS ON.
But honestly tho, ur not good at this game so u shouldn't say anything bout this matter of wether progamers are wasting there time or not, cuz even the worst pro would own ya hard  .
I dont mean to be BM, but im just being bluntly honest.
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When it comes to controlling armies, you cannot use attack move shortcut when you're selecting your army with hotkeys. Again, it's a waste of hand movement, because you have to press a number then a letter then a number and so forth.
probably already been said.. but this is just wrong. players can press keyboard sequences together pretty quickly via 2 different fingers. e.g. 1a2a3a4a. the reason they use right click is well.. right click owns hard if used well, and it is faster, and more useful, more precise, the part you use to micro.. etc.
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Frankly Doomer, I saw some replays of you vs aSp]ovlo[, and you didn't strike me as too good :D but then maybe they were off games or you're out of practice. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. (:
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Norway28900 Posts
having 50% hotkeys means you're having a whole lot of useless clicks.
personally im usually between 8 and 20% hotkey, which is usually enough, but tvz I could use more. I mean, 50% hotkey means every other thing you click is a hotkey. which is obviously too much.
but having 1% hotkey is far from enough. you *need* more than 5%.
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On April 15 2004 09:40 ObsoleteLogic wrote:
Frankly Doomer, I saw some replays of you vs aSp]ovlo[, and you didn't strike me as too good :D but then maybe they were off games or you're out of practice. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. (:
ha i knew he'd show those games to someone. but actually i was having quite an off day + thought he was newb thats y i didn't push that one game -_- i just went tank+vult to run him over. either way im 2-0 with u using my z  , but u gave me the benefit of doubt so ill do same ^^. Dunno where this came up tho i never said anything regaurding my skill level ==;
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Eri, did you read my whole post?
Because you just said pretty much every pro-Terran post-Nada has a whole lot of useless clicks. Maybe they are not the most useful clicks, but they are not useless (past 5 minutes, at least). Lets review!
10 minutes in. TvZ. I have the Z contained with m&m, he's going lurk. Puttering around in my base, I see a whole bunch of little red dots charging my units on the minimap. I have to double-tap the hotkey corresponding to the units to run away, not able to really inflict any damage since I had to take the time where I could have (inflicted damage), had I been looking at my units, to react.
Assuming I'm constantly hitting my hotkeys, just to look at my units, I see these units coming right away, and can kill a few units before having to back off. Granted I have not seen a replay of you in a long time, but of all I've ever seen, your reaction speed has never impressed me... and I've never seen you above 160 apm 
But I love your crazy Norwegian humor.
So no hard feelings? (:
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On April 15 2004 09:18 jca wrote: Show nested quote +On April 15 2004 08:39 Toff wrote: On April 15 2004 04:11 jca wrote: On April 15 2004 03:29 Hautamaki wrote:
APM means nothing, what matters is how quickly you accomplish tasks. haha, that's a funny statement. It's like saying to a F1 driver that driving fast means nothing, what matters is winning the race. Any chance of a correlation between the two? Please stop staying "APM means shit". APM is a measurement that contains some information about your ability to accomplish tasks quickly. That's all it is, but it's not "nothing". I don't think you understood what he meant. As I understood it he said he was probably as fast or faster than wax even if he had lower APM. Is that a funny statement? I don't care what he meant, i care about what he wrote which is very clear: "APM means nothing, what matters is how quickly you accomplish tasks" and even you should be able to read it and realize it's absurd. If you don't, go back to school and learn.
You should learn to fucking try to get the meaning of the whole post and not just one sentence. Sure it's cool to take out one sentence and ridicule it, but it is fucking pointless. You should argue meaning not semantics.
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you can never break 150 apm without hotkeys
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But I guess you probably take any critisim of APM kinda personal, since its more or less your claim to fame.
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I find Zerg to be able to make most of the hotkeys. If you hotkey ur hatches, you can stay at battle for a very long time without looking back to ur bases, since everything is built from the hatches. Also with the large amount of units obviously...
When I play protoss my hot key % is about 10, basically only unit hot keys and nexus hot keys, I don't hotkey all gates and I agree with thread-starter that it's pretty hard for ppl with short hand to be able to macro gates w/ hotkeys.
Terran...no hot keys/ messed up hot keys = lose.
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ive been at 200+ apm for about a year now, but only in the past 5 months has my mulitasking gotten to the point that i can litterally be attacking+dropping+macroing at virtually same time in an efficient way. So ya alot of people with 200+ apm do alot of useless clicks, but it still helps and as those people get better, there mulitasking starts to benefit much  .
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Nada makes his initial attack with M&M because he believes he can break 4~5 sunkens with good micro. You watch sync, he does the same thing except sync is usually more successful with it than nada
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Look at GoodFriend FPvod... his mouse barely moves, but he hotkeys so much that his apm is still ~300
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Hotkeys are very important, i dont see how you could be a good player without using them.
I just hotkey units and use the f keys for gateway/factory clusters.
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i play lefty style(even though im right handed) so my right hand is on all the keys and i can very easily hotkey gates/units.. i press like 2z3z4z5z but in late game i usually hotkey units and nexus... not gates
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On April 15 2004 08:11 FreeZEternal wrote:
I hotkey everything -_-;; even tech buildings while they are being built cuz I have to tech while microing,etc.For example while I'm harassing with goons to a terran I hotkey my citadel being built+_+so i can make my templar archive while microing and in exact time+_+;
cool
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Norway28900 Posts
I've often been above 200. only with zerg though. and I'm below 20% hotkey even then.
obsolete you should be smart enough to realize that when every other thing you do is press a hotkey, that's obviously not useful, considering just pressing a hotkey and then not doing anything is really not a useful thing to do. unless you have every single unit you ever use for anything and every single building you ever use for anything hotkeyed, you can't get 50% hotkey use without having a bunch of useless hotkey mashings.
basically, if hotkey+select adds up to more than 50%, it means you're spending more time hotkeying/selecting than you should, as it means you are selecting a unit or using a hotkey without doing anything with the unit/building you selected, which IS VERY RARELY USEFUL. (occasionally, like if you have your lord hotkeyed early game and you see a unit on the minimap and he randomed, pressing the lord's hotkey twice so you can instantly be relocated and see his race, is useful, and then you only press hotkey without doing anything else. ) but in almost all other situations, pressing the hotkey is not useful unless you also do something with the unit(s)/building you selected, and if you always do something with the unit you selected, you won't end up with 50% hotkey use.
I just checked the two nada replays I have on my computer and he had 35% and 42% hotkey use, and 49% and 54% hotkey/select use. 35% hotkey and 49% hotkey/select is pretty close to optimal, imo.. 54% is *slightly* too much, but not close to a "big deal". when people are like 50% hotkey and 15% select however, they really should start spamming less, as it makes them waste time doing useless clicks. early game it's of course acceptable as you're not doing anything more useful then..
also obsolete I think you're dead wrong about my reaction, the fact that I avoided playing with sound for a 3 year period made me focus so much on watching the minimap that it's one of the things I'm best at, and you have hardly ever watched me play..
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EPT
