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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.
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zerg is very different 
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With Protoss you might be able to get away without unit hotkeys, but you need them for production.
Hotkeys are definitely needed with Zerg and Terran.
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I'd play terran a lot better if i used hotkeys instead of drag selecting everything, but it's tough to get used to.
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Strange point of view,
as a protoss player, I really dont know what would I do without hotkeys, and Im sure I have yet to find a protoss that doesnt see a great advantage in using hotkeys.
The first thing that came to my mind was that when you say that its faster to just click the gate and press a button, you are missing the point of hotkeying the gates. When you select your gate, you have your screen showing your base, while you could be microing with your units the hell out of your opponent, while constantly producing, without having queued anything.
Im not sure I understand what you meant by the impossibility of using attack move combined with the use of hotkeys.
So I will just say what I do with unit hotkey that I find usefull.
First I only hotkey the units I have in front line, few goon in the begining vs terran, few corsair, few zealot whatever Im using to pressure the opponent.
Then again if im building stuff in my base, I doesnt have to go see what is attacking my goons to know the first thing I should do is fall back, and its a matter of 1 second, then you might have loss 3 goon to sieges instead of just one siege hit. Just because you had to use minimap, select goon..
Also you might right in the beggining see the importance of hotkeying in pvt, your scout probe in a terran base can survive easily even a marine if you give him constant care, but then how can you keep producing constance probe, build your base, and produce units without missing something. While microing probe I have just to press 1 2 3 and i see that 1, probe is almost done, queue another, 2, goon is soon done queue one, 3, robo is half done or whatever you can follow (could be a pylon or another gate).
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I think this all depends on how dextrous your hands are. I find it pretty easy to hit various far-reaching combinations on the keyboard. I never take my hand off the mouse. It's all stylistic though, make whatever you use work for you.
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United States33249 Posts
you are sort of slow though ;p
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Hautamki is a talented player. I can't see how he could be better with one hand than with two, unless he has a pirate's hook for his left hand.
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i gotta agree with him though lately i have been downgrading my hotkeys, just one (5) to centre on gateways and then manual, 1-4 units and yeh i think its working faster for me too. 4z5z6z7z8z9z i find really annoying although it has its advantages in that u dont take ur eyes off battle.
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Actually I used to play toss and I can pretty much agree with what you're saying, But what I did was still use ctrl groups + attack move and I keyed obs, other than that I moused everything. But now as terran if I tried that stuff I would be terribly slow.
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I still use hotkeys for a lot of stuff. I hotkey shuttles and carriers of course. I also hotkey my scouting probe of course. And, I also hotkey my first 12 units, be they rushing zealots vs toss or zerg, or my first set of goons vs terran. It's the other situations that I was talking about that hotkeys are pointless in.
For example, why hotkey nexus to produce probes? You can always go back to your nexus by pressing space key. If I hotkey my nexus to 0, I never use it anyways.
Hotkey gateways to produce units in the middle of the battle? Who are you kidding? If you're building units in the middle of the battle you obviously arent controlling your units so you might as well not be looking at them either. I can click my minimap to go to my gates and select them and press the keyboard shortcut, and then press space bar to go back to the fight, than you can press 1-z 2-d 3-z 4-k etc, I guarantee it.
What's the point of hotkeying only a half or a quarter of your gates anyways? If you aren't going to use them all, why even build them? When I go to build something, I do it with all my gates.
And Wax, when you call me slow, are you referring to my low apm? APM means nothing, what matters is how quickly you accomplish tasks. I accomplish the same number of tasks as you, I just use fewer clicks because I'm not wasting time setting hotkeys and cycling through them. Personally I'd say I'm faster than you, despite having lower apm. I think the pvp games that we play, where I consistantly outharass you, bear me out on that score.
Amat I use both hands of course, in fact I use my hands far more equally than more people. I'd say that most of you are the one handed players, because you do so much more with your keyboard than you need to.
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Ok that clears pretty much things out
Only one thing of my point of you, you havent figured out.
When you are ready to start a fight, or even in a middle of a fight, you dont need 100% of your time to control units, you need 100% of the time watching if everything is happening like it should.
Also when you do 1z2z3z its easy to interrupt production to do the little micro needed and then continue, but if you go to your base do 2 gate units, come back to battle, go back to your base add 2 units.. it might cost something.
You are also saying that there is no point in hotkeying half/quater of the gate, but there is... Constant production on 8 gate is usually sufficient in anygame to secure your ass, then going manually to handle production from other gate is no big deal.
I respect your playing style, it just that it really fits the need of your playing style and maybe in the end we all have our styles evolved from our control habits.
You are right also that people overuse keyboard, and overuse move, overuse a bit of anything. But there are still people out there that dont give shit about apm, and it's nice seeing sometime rep chart where the guy is averaging 130, but will have peaks at 300, when he need them, and will not fool himself by having 400 in the 3 first minutes then cant go over 100 when things start happening.
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Sweden33719 Posts
I hotkey my gates 4-5 - if you don't do that when you zealot rush (or a similiar combination) you will die.
I then, depending on what mood I am in, either keep keying gates up to 0 from 4. I can use it, it's great for setting rally points to where your army is currently headed. When I played the most, that would win me games. Currently I'm not playing as much and I need to get back into the habit of 4z r 5 z r etc
Hotkeying units does not negate attack move.. As long as you hotkey your units wisely they won't be running into stuff with a move, that is- don't key zealots with goons or hts, don't key shuttles with goons (when my friend does that I always cringe) etc.
The reason you don't use 0 for nexus is because you are not used to it - I used 0 for nex from game 1 or maybe 2. Same with 4 for gate. And the reason for keying 4567890 is that you CAN micro and produce, you don't want to take your eyes of the screen in case something unexpected happens (I'll admit that in the shape I am now - I do the same as you, I double tap 4 and make units from all my gates or hit space, but I was BETTER before when I didn't do that). The advantages: You'll get a constant flow of units, your cash will be close to zero, you can use that little extra time to, say, start a nexus, start an upgrade, micro that much better or storm drop somewhere.
And wax isn't exactly speed king However, I know speed - apm - means jack shit. Look at intotherain, nal_ra, garimto, Daezang etc. All, except for the new and improved nal_ra, used to be/are under 200 apm most games. Then we have wax, who can play effectively with his 100 apm, and a friend of mine who was insanely effective with his barely 100 apm, although now he has got like 150 but yeah.
Rant over.
EDIT:
I have about 200 apm or less any game I play. It's just my style, I get between 150 and 200 in most of my games, with battle peaks of 250-400 when I'm playing PvZ. I use mouse A LOT, seeing as how I'm really fast and pretty accurate with it
When I play terran, I usually just key 4 rax, maybe 5 fac, 09 scan, 1234 units. As zerg I do 123 units early on with 4567890 for hatch, I always key drops, and late game I switch to massive unit keying.
With toss and terran I always key shuttles/dships - even more than one. I should do it the pro way - they key anything they need right NOW to 1, then change around -.- Like dship will be 1 one second, a group of marines the next - or so I remember reading in an interview or something like that -.-
Oh and I use very little hotkeys in TvP, I abuse space key and never use f2 except when I have forgotten to key my nexus and can't space my way back and it's urgent.
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Vatican City State593 Posts
retarded bs. 1a2a3a4a5a, macro during battle while you micro, quickly selecting special units with group keys, cycle through expos with f-keys... those are essentials. you'll never be a great player if you can't or won't do it.
and progamers don't bother to attack move.. wtf are you kiddin me?
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I dont think that was meant to be taken literally T_T
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I would say that at top level of play hotkeys actually decide games.
Like hautamaki said, that is how they can outharass you with macro suffering zero percent.
If u have unit producing buildings hotkeyed, u can focuse more o micro without using any macro time. And trust me that u can produce non stop units that way, because u never check all the time if u are producing.
And if u would want, you wold lose precious time. So with using hotkeys
u produce the same amount of troops from 4 factories as you from 6.
But later when they have more troops they always asign hotkeys to units. That is so you can micro large army. That skill is really precious.
Oh and one thing that makes up for that there are only 10 hotkeys.
Those are f2-r4 keys. U can asign those screens to expands so u check there fast to macro. Or later when u assign ur gateway hotkeys to troops u put entire screen of gateways or factories to f2-f4 hoteys.
Using minimap is just a little too slow, and u miss exact location a bit and u have to correct it. You lose that precious 2, 3 seconds during micro. And at today's level of play micro is everything.
Im sure best players must use f2-f4 keys, at least for nada, because he
builds scvs the fastest.
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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".
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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. i can tell your never gonna get any good 
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if you think you are faster without hotkeys you are HIGHLY mistaken, ;\ having to drag then click your units is sooooo much slower than using hotkeys, 1a 2a 3a 4a etc, isnt a watse of time you must be incredibly slow at it to think that. You probably arent very good, but if you dont use hoteksy i doubt ull ever improve :o
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i have a feeling that this fellow doesnt know what he has goten himself into.
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is this like a quest to see who can get flamed the most?? hautamaki - enlighten...
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hotkeys are very important -_-;
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United States33249 Posts
On April 15 2004 03:29 Hautamaki wrote:
I can click my minimap to go to my gates and select them and press the keyboard shortcut, and then press space bar to go back to the fight, than you can press 1-z 2-d 3-z 4-k etc, I guarantee it.
And Wax, when you call me slow, are you referring to my low apm? APM means nothing, what matters is how quickly you accomplish tasks. I accomplish the same number of tasks as you, I just use fewer clicks because I'm not wasting time setting hotkeys and cycling through them. Personally I'd say I'm faster than you, despite having lower apm. I think the pvp games that we play, where I consistantly outharass you, bear me out on that score.
you can't guarantee that, that wasn't the wisest thing to say -_-
I produce by clicking on gates too ;p
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I somehow got the feeling, if we'd take 1000 random players from bnet (USWest, European or Asian Server) Hautamaki would have problems to make it into the Top 990 x_O
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hotkeys plz, gives you much more control
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Hotkeys are like republicans; they're a necassary evil to keep the hippies at bay.
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Im terran user and i use hotkeys for most actions.
w/o it i would be TERRIBLE slow
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Norway28609 Posts
they are innnnnnnnnnnnsaaaaaaaaaaaneeeeeeeeeeeeelllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy important
there's nothing that has made me improve as much as starting using hotkeys. it made a bigger impact than changing from trackball into a normal mouse. which is also incredibly significant.
when you're zealotrushing someone, if you don't have your gateways and nexus hotkeyed, you will either fuck up zealot micro every 20 seconds (which kills you), or you won't be producing probes/zealots. (which unless you kill him, kills you.)
maybe you just have really really really tiny hands or something. but personally I can do 0a with my left hand faster than I can mark 12 units with my mouse and press a. and 1a goes way faster than 0a.
honestly you probably haven't used them enough to realize how beneficial they are. mostly everyone who struggles with bad macro do so because they lack hotkeyed buildings. :/
that's what my tvz lacks too, but im not really fast enough to do it through hotkeys either in lategame. basically when you have to watch your units most of the time, you really really need to have the buildings hotkeyed, but if there's no action going on then it's not important.
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I used to use hotkeys for units a lot more, but lately I'm more likely to just drag select. I've never used hotkeys for buildings much.
edit: I hotkey gates when rushing now, but not in mid-game.
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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+_+;
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My response to the original poster, not reading everyone elses.
You say clicking gates and hitting z is faster, and I agree, this is faster than some moron using 1z 2z 3z. I think that is the slowest possible way to macro, period.
However..this is how I macro: 1(click unit), 2(click unit). The same principle applies for me, that does for you. I keep my hand on my mouse, AND I keep my hand on my hotkey numbers, so I can c ontrol my units much faster than you could having to bring your hand back up from hitting Z. Not only that, but macroing with hotkeys allows you to quickly build more units in the heat of battle. You can click 123456 along with clicking on a zealot faster than light (the only down side is that sometimes if you do this too fast, it'll skip a gateway  ) But it's worth it to macro and micro your units at the same time, never taking your eyes off the actual action.
Using hotkeys to control your units is a big thing for mobility. If you're facing 20 hydras, and you have 5 dragoons and 10 zealots, you'll want to run your zealots up and try to surround, right? That's easy if you've got your Zealots hotkeyed to 1. You just click 1, and send them around. However, if you're just selecting a bunch of units at once, you'll tell your dragoons to surround too, making them lose shoots, take more damage than normal, and possibly lose. With high templar drops, you usually want to do these in the heat of battle..so your opponet hears he's under attack from the front, and you storm him from the back. You want to control all your units, so you don't lose the front, and you storm him. It'd take too long to click back and fourth to do both at the same time, you might take some big damage (say he storms your front attack, while you're storming his probes..you lose 10 dragoons or something because you couldn't micro it at the same time) hotkeys help. Or if you're going to attack a zerg, and you wind up in a lurker field..you want to get your units out of there as fast as possible, and clicking and selecting just wouldn't be as fast as 1(right click), 2 (rightclick).
You said your fingers are too small for the F keys.. well, unless you're sporting half inch nubs(yes, NUBS, that spells nubs, not newbs, and anyone who says nub as newb is a fucking idiot) (now that that's said, I can move on) you can reach those. If you want to play fast and effecient, your hands should primarily be near your hotkeys..and your fkeys are right up from those, giving you access to both. I guess your hand might be somewhere else if you were macroing by pressing z or d way down oin the keyboard, but give 1click2click a shot and see how that works maybe.
and F keys..you gotta have those f'in f keys(AHAHHAHA, I MAKE FUNNEY) (I just woke up.) The only and best use for F keys for me, is used on your bases. Bases meaning, where you mine from. Using the MAYNARD TRANSFER, YES IT IS THE MAYNARD TRANSFER, DIE!, you can save a lot of probes, as well as make probes quickly and send newly made ones to mine. As I've explained before, f2, select, f3, right click. Faster than light, save you about 20 probes from tank drops. If you get later in the game with more than 3 expos, then after your first ones are massed up with probes, switch them to new bases so you can macro probes from there easily, by just hitting F2, click nexus, click probe (or hit P)
Fuck me... /end rant
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On April 15 2004 04:11 jca wrote: Show nested quote +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?
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Thread creator... are you any good at this game? :-)
I just can't imagine someone being even average at this game without hotkeys :S.
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Norway28609 Posts
it's definitely possible to be decent with toss without using hotkeys.
there are just some aspects you will be really really bad at. like zealot rushing. playing decent pvt without hotkeying anything is definitely possible. but anyone will benefit from using hotkeys.
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I think for toss the hotkeys for your gates mid game matter a lot. Also when u have a lot units u better htokey 1 2 3 or something to keep your units togheter. I agree with Drone hotkeying is needed for good macro.
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On April 15 2004 08:47 Frits wrote:
Thread creator... are you any good at this game? :-)
I just can't imagine someone being even average at this game without hotkeys :S.
I did it for the longest time on regular starcraft..I remember microwaring some guy, and he tried to explain to me what hotkeys were lol. I don't know how I actually started using them. I didn't learn about the shift click toadd to a group until like.. probably 7 months ago
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On April 15 2004 08:39 Toff wrote: Show nested quote +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.
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I don't use hotkeys (much) except for units that is. Im zerg, ok I suck but I can beat some people ^_^
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but then again, i switch screen fast so my macro is most of times "pretty good".
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some pros dont hotkey units in some parts of the game, they only hotkey buildings so they can produce while they micro
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.
the distinction between the speed of accomplishing tasks and APM is absurd? what the fuck? apm doesn't count minimap, f2 f3 f4, alt+c, it counts many things the same despite that some are much easier to do quickly (despite that one needs to do both of them) ... it's so easy to imagine an example where one raises their apm while the speed at which they accomplish tasks remains the same or is lowered, i won't even give you one.
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.
just how short are your fingers? i think this may be more a question of form than of ability. put your pinky on ctrl. put your ring finger on shift. can you reach f2 with your middle finger? is it hard? do it until it isn't hard. problem solved probably. it's much worth it in the right situations. clicking the minimap accurately and quickly is, well.. slower than hitting "11" or f2 or even scrolling. it's a death hole that kills your pace because of the way the mini map works (lets you drag, so you have to almost stop to get it where you want it). if the minimap is faster than everything else, that is very weird. your minimap is godly or everything else is.. slower than the minimap?
as for producing from buildings you didn't hotkey, that is pretty good in most cases as long as you quickly get the buildings on your screen in the first place. a hotkey or a location seems fine, but if your minimap is better than those, then go for it i guess. i am wondering just how fast your minimap is though because it seems to me that one has to stop or drag for longer than it takes to press 11 or f2 in order to get an accurate spot on the minimap. combined with some scrolling it can get pretty quick but. mm. strange
hotkeying is the quickest way to go build a bunch of stuff while keeping your screen on your units, which is sometimes the thing to do. it's also the quickest way to center your screen on while selecting some units, which is the fastest reaction, or even to select and give them an order without centering the screen. at different points in the game either of these will be very powerful and not having them will cost you
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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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Norway28609 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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Norway28609 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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apm is good..nothing bad. It might be useless but not bad.
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I hotkey(or try to) everything I plan to use. Often I prepare for a drop but I can't find my dropships, but if I hotkeyed them, I could just cycle through my hotkeys and find the dropships eventually, that's why I hotkey everything I plan to use.
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Baltimore, USA22251 Posts
On April 15 2004 03:29 Hautamaki wrote:
Hotkey gateways to produce units in the middle of the battle? Who are you kidding? If you're building units in the middle of the battle you obviously arent controlling your units so you might as well not be looking at them either.
Are you serious? This is one of the biggest problems I see newbies having... they'll sit there and do nothing but watch their units, so that by the time they're killed, they have 2k resources and no units. It is essential that you keep producing units, even while microing fights, especially during, say, TvZ for example, when infantry builds so fast anyways, or as Drone said, if you're Zeal rushing, you MUST hotkey, or you're going to lose.
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its pretty fucking simple to right click then press 1z, select ur guys, right click again, press 2z, etc. i see pp do it all the time.. as long as you can keep an eye on your units you will see when is a good time to produce a unit or two
some ppl say u cant get above 100 apm without hotkeys. some say 120. some 130, 140, 150. some 170. some 180. some 200. some 220. 230. 240.
right now i can personally envision playing 240 with no hotkeys. sure, it would take 10 hrs a day or wahtever, but thats what i see as possible. i used to think it was 140, then 150.. so dont be so quick to conclude that whatever you do is the fastests. look at boxer's mouse :|
when i read this thread i think i can tell which of you have never seen a first person vod or watched with lasgo observer pack :| not carefully enough anyways
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Can't we just conclude that hotkeys are here to stay.
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Norway28609 Posts
hautameki pressing 4z5z6z7z takes me ~1 second (although sometimes I end up only producing from three of them, and sometimes I queue some in 1, that's still much better than not producing ANY. ) and I can still be watching/microing the battle. having to go back into my base then selecting each gateway and producing then doesn't take much less time, but I have to take my eyes off the fighting and that might end up killing me, although it's much more harmful with zerg than protoss.
I played without buildings hotkeyed for 5 years or so. and I was a good player then as well, because I was good at playing without them hotkeyed and I had found a style that suited that kind of playing well. but I improved sooooo much when I started hotkeying them and got accustomed to that instead, and I don't see any reason why other people would not improve in the same way I did.
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Hautamaki, I dont want to flame like the rest of the hotkey players, but I think that basically the problem is two things: a, you're playing a race that is not THAT dependent on harass (as opposed to vulture / tank cliffing / dropship micro , MM vs lurker micro for terran and mutalisk / speedling harass vs terran/protoss)
With protoss, a few seonds delay of not watching your units wont kill them, but if you're terran, and you have a bunch of marines, and yo'ure clicking on the minimap as opposed to 11 or 22, you'll lose all of your rines in that milisecond difference.
Second, I dont' think that you're really familiar with hotkeys ( as you dont really have to), so its kind of awkard (and everyone has it awkward at first). I play piano (Chopin etudes, etc), so I guess it wasn't that hard for me to pick up hotkeying, and I find it invaluable, being a Terran user, there is no way I could target probes, mine as much, if I couldn't do 3t4t5t6v7v8v (which is about 2 seconds, and even so I can still micro vultures). I can 1a2a3a4a5a as fast / faster than NaDa (in chat window, etc), so I guess its easier for me, but you really have to try them for a while to realize their full benefit. When you can move your ENTIRE protoss army as a whole green cloud of death, then you'll truly appreciate your skill of doing 1a2a3a4a5a in 1 second -_--''''
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Last two answers are so nice -.- If you are ok before using hotkeys, you'll become really good once you changed your style. Only needs about 500 games to do the conversion ;-p
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I can't live without my Fkeys. The day when I spilled coke on my keyboard making my F3 and F4 keys not work was the saddest day ever >_< (I'm too cheap/lazy to buy a new keyboard ) I always have to be careful when building factories or any construction buildings - all have to be within one screen of reach, ensures fastest unit production for me (using F2), cause pressing 5t6t8t8t9t once I have to really have to micro is impossible for me. I have a mental block or something. Before what I used to do was F2 for production and F3 for battle. That way I keep switching position of F3 all the time, and hoppin from F2 to F3. I sorta put the battle 'on hold', macro, then go back to the battle that looks more or less exactly how I left it. Now I have to go back through unit hotkeys/minimap, and that's not too fun/fast cause the screen position changes.. >_<
And seeing Enough dance hydra while macroing like a whore is beautiful. He spawns from 3 hats while hydras are moving, and he is done before they take a second step; all the while nearly perfectly dodging storms, fighting DTs and avoiding Zealot surround with 3+ hotkeys of hydra >_< insanity.. I wish I could do that
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On April 15 2004 03:29 Hautamaki wrote:
I still use hotkeys for a lot of stuff. I hotkey shuttles and carriers of course. I also hotkey my scouting probe of course. And, I also hotkey my first 12 units, be they rushing zealots vs toss or zerg, or my first set of goons vs terran. It's the other situations that I was talking about that hotkeys are pointless in.
For example, why hotkey nexus to produce probes? You can always go back to your nexus by pressing space key. If I hotkey my nexus to 0, I never use it anyways.
Hotkey gateways to produce units in the middle of the battle? Who are you kidding? If you're building units in the middle of the battle you obviously arent controlling your units so you might as well not be looking at them either. I can click my minimap to go to my gates and select them and press the keyboard shortcut, and then press space bar to go back to the fight, than you can press 1-z 2-d 3-z 4-k etc, I guarantee it.
What's the point of hotkeying only a half or a quarter of your gates anyways? If you aren't going to use them all, why even build them? When I go to build something, I do it with all my gates.
And Wax, when you call me slow, are you referring to my low apm? APM means nothing, what matters is how quickly you accomplish tasks. I accomplish the same number of tasks as you, I just use fewer clicks because I'm not wasting time setting hotkeys and cycling through them. Personally I'd say I'm faster than you, despite having lower apm. I think the pvp games that we play, where I consistantly outharass you, bear me out on that score.
Amat I use both hands of course, in fact I use my hands far more equally than more people. I'd say that most of you are the one handed players, because you do so much more with your keyboard than you need to.
Hautamaki, I've watched your replays and visited your SC Shrine. Good work.
Now from what I've seen from your replays and what you talk about, you lack something. That thing is speed. You are slower than what you think you are. I remember you writing that you are a very good gamer. I think that you are just a above average gamer. [ I'm pretty sure ] on that little player rating thing. From newb to true gosu. Something like that, I haven't been to it in a while. I'm not talking about your APM, your speed overall. While we're talking about APM, I'll tell you right now, you are wrong, APM has some to do with your speed. Not zero as you stated in the above quote. Of course your APM doesn't prove how fast you do things, but the speed you do things is R-E-F-L-E-C-T-E-D in your APM, therefore if you're slow, your APM will be lower. [ Obviously right? ]
What is your definition of fast, and how can someone be faster than someone else even if they have lower APM? Does that mean someone who has 200 APM can be faster than Boxer who gets up to 350 APM? Hell no, right? Yes, there is a certain ratio in which APM doesn't have anything to do with speed, but your overall speed IS part of your APM.
Also a really weird statement you made is that you don't need to make probes during the middle of a battle, and if you do that you are not concentrating and might as well not look. Though I think of you as an above average gamer, that statement is really NEWBIE.
You cannot tell me that every half second of battle you are constantly clicking and moving units around. If you did that, there would be no point to micro. The whole point is called = MACRO. Yes MACRO the thing that you so explained on your website. This is the situation so I can better show it to you.
Small Battle: 6 Goons vs 16 lings. [ Your nexus is hotkeyed 5 ] [ Goon group is hotkeyed 1 ]
They coming running at you, this is when the battle starts, presume you have range and your goon opens up to take it's first shot.
Freeze frame right there. Right when it opens to shoot, you noticed you have something like 300 minerals. That's when you press '5' and then 'p' very quickly to build the probe. Then you press '1'
I guarantee you if you aren't new at hotkeys, doing all that will take less than one actual second. '5' 'p' '1'
Then you can move back, shoot, move back shoot, move back [ Then press 5 to check on the progress of your probe to see if you need to build another one ] shoot, move back.
Large battle: 20 Goons + 2 Templars with energy for 2 storms vs 30 Hydras and swarm.
You approach hydras, you stop just out of their range. Again '5' 'p' '1'. 1 so you can reselect your group. Then you storm the group of hydras, they come after you, you micro your templars back away from concentrated fire. Then move your goons around. He casts swarm, you back away. '5' 'p' '1' then you storm, move back again and repeat.
That is why. If you think all of this is impossible or unlogical, you are simply too slow.
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mowing the lawn gives me +20 apm!
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United States33249 Posts
just pointing out ;p
players like boxer can micro every single second of the battle, and not macro at all
it can make or break games, for boxer it's won him his share of games, and lost him some too -_-
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I agree with you that it's probably just as fast to produce units out of gates with no hotkeys than it is with hotkeys. I mean, clicking to your gates on the minimap and cycling through them with your mouse and one shorcut key on the keyboard is probably just as fast or faster than using 10 shortcut keys on your keyboard to do the same thing.
I disagree that it's not usefull to hotkey your units though. If I have three or four groups of units hotkeyed, when I want them to move somewhere, I can do it fast, with little reaction time. I can make sure every single unit gets the command. If you drag a box around units, you will miss some strays, or you will get more than 12 units inside the box sometimes, and they will remain unselected.
Here's a good example of something you couldn't do without hotkeys. Your obs sees a terran opponent moving out of his base. you want to flank him. without ever even moving your view screen, you can set up the flank using the minimap alone. You never have to even look at your troops, they aren't engaged in battle yet, but you can position them perfectly for the flank. If the units weren't hotkeyed, you'd have to click on the minimap, drag select a group, click on the minimap again, drag select, click minimap, etc. With the hotkeys, my mouse never even has to leave the minimap area. It's practically instantaneous.
I usually only hotkey 3 - 4 groups of ground units, because they are close enough to the A key to make attack move no problem.
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lol no hotcley ... you will be good dont stop
90 apm + no hotcley gl for kill some good player haha
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Valhalla18444 Posts
On April 15 2004 11:30 STIMEY d okgm fish wrote:
its pretty fucking simple to right click then press 1z, select ur guys, right click again, press 2z, etc. i see pp do it all the time.. as long as you can keep an eye on your units you will see when is a good time to produce a unit or two
some ppl say u cant get above 100 apm without hotkeys. some say 120. some 130, 140, 150. some 170. some 180. some 200. some 220. 230. 240.
right now i can personally envision playing 240 with no hotkeys. sure, it would take 10 hrs a day or wahtever, but thats what i see as possible. i used to think it was 140, then 150.. so dont be so quick to conclude that whatever you do is the fastests. look at boxer's mouse :|
when i read this thread i think i can tell which of you have never seen a first person vod or watched with lasgo observer pack :| not carefully enough anyways
I would like to state that I can get 180apm with less than 5% hotkey
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Hotkeys are one of the most vital parts in the gap between good and bad players.
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ya fakestave. exactly.. whatever ppl can get, they will say its the max. really the diff between "ah so slow keep fucking up" and "ah this feels nice n smooth" is about 20 apm to me, but where that 20 apm has varied and keeps moving up. but that next 20 always seem hard, just takes time. or you can change how you play and gain a lot more than 20 with just hotkeys. pros do it cuz their mouse speed is already great and they would prolly get 250 with no hotkeys. why do ppl who would get 120 with no hotkeys feel its time to max out keyboard and stop growing with mouse? dunno. cuz they smart.
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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. It's the same problem as construction, even Progamers don't bother to attack move, they just use right click move.
What the hell, completely wrong! 12 units recalled by hotkey or a selection are the same thing, you can always attack move them. And progamers and us normal gamers usually attack moves when we want the units to kill stuff in the way and move them when we want them to just get wherever the hell we want them to go ...
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Alright, to end ALL arguments about whether to hotkey or not -> try playing Terran vs Zerg without hotkeys (either way). Good Luck.
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Your left hand increases how well you play by factors. For instance when I play I think using my left hand increases my playing ability by about x1000. You just have to be able to coordinate between your left and right brain. Some people have a hard time doing that apparently. Guess Im lucky.
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lol when you play using your left hand your ability increase by 1000? youmust really suck to be able to increase by 1000. omg.. wow. so even tho ur mouse is like 80 apm and u need to pound the keyboard nonstop to get 150 apm, that increase actually makes u 1000 times better? wowowo
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On April 15 2004 10:41 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I've often been above 200. only with zerg though. and I'm below 20% hotkey even then.
Never seen one of those reps, though I never claimed to watch a lot of replays of you. I've seen maybe 10. And I played some fellow TvP the other day where he was 200+ with 4 hotkeys the entire game o_o
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.
Absolutely! Going 123412341234 isn't useful at all. Going 11223344, however, can be, particularly when you have your units spread around in various places. Its the fastest way (for me - my mouse isn't very fast) to check up on my units, and often the fastest way to react. On top of that, I do hotkey almost everything. Since I don't really use set build orders, and prefer to be flexible, I like to see units/buildings production progress to give me a better sense of where I am. Usually in a 10 minute game I've filled up all 10 keys with something or other; why have the key if you're not going to use it?
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..
I just checked 15 of the 144 Nada replays on my computer and he was over 40% hotkey every time, over 50% 8 times.
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..
No, I haven't watched you play too much - but I never said your reaction time was bad, I simply said I was unimpressed. Nada's reaction time impresses me. XellOs' reaction time impresses me. Yours is good (probably a good bit better than mine), but nothing that makes me go "wow".
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Oh, but if you want to a lot of pointless action from Nada, his set rally is often around 10% Setting your rally 30 times on one position isn't very useful, imo (:
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long story short, yes they are very important
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this is why i made http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=12211
ppl shouldnt talk about "50% hotkey" and "select + hotkey over 50%", they should say "yeah your hotkey is N per minute, but your move per minute is below M which REALLY sucks. nada keeps X Y Z about A B C per minute so thats why he does more hotkey. if u cant keep A B C per minute, quit fucking spamming"
further e.g. from link:
On March 27 2004 09:04 STIMEY d okgm fish wrote:
imagine if it told you the "per minute" of each action (next to the graph)... i've suggested this before. for example: (yes these are from actual replays)
nada tvz 363 action per minute
179 hotkey per minute
54 move per minute
41 select per minute
28 rally per minute
18 attack move per minute
12 train per minute
5 stop per minute
5 shift select per minute
5 heal per minute
boxer tvt 217 action per minute
72 move per minute <-- both nada and boxer 50+
54 hotkey per minute <-- both nada and boxer 50+
43 select per minute <-- both nada and boxer 40+
12 rally per minute <-- both nada and boxer 10+
6 train per minute <-- both nada and boxer 5+
5 attack move per minute <-- both nada and boxer 5+
5 shift select per minute <-- both nada and boxer 5
3 unload per minute
3 build per minute
of course these are single reps, dunno the matchup, situation, etc. just pretend tehse are right. if your hotkey per minute is progamer level but everything else isnt even close, you are not doing yourself a favor with your hotkeying.
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If your good with 200+ apm. it really helps to keep focused on the game and helps u remember what your doing, even if your wasting some clicks.
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this may sounds dumb, but why do you use the attack button? isn't right clicking easier? :D
and yes, im a noob, 70apm and i play since january
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On April 15 2004 15:24 stFz wrote: this may sounds dumb, but why do you use the attack button? isn't right clicking easier? :D and yes, im a noob, 70apm and i play since january
because that way your units attack everything on the way to that spot (if you leave them alone, you should be microing most of them anyway that is )
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Sweden33719 Posts
sTFz - you use the a key and not the actual button btw
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One thing I will say.
UNLESS YOU ARE A SUPER FAST PLAYER NEVER NEVER NEVER USE RIGHT CLICK TO MOVE UNITS.
Maybe 3a4a5a6a7a (how I do it) is faster than 1a2a3a4a5a (how most people do it). But the difference for me between 3a4a5a6a7a and right clicking is very small. But if your units are ambushed the differences between your units fighting and dieing is quite big.
The following is in reply to the Hautamki's posts:
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.
Depends.
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.
I don't use the F keys because I've never bothered to learn them. Trust me though, it is better to use them than to not use them.
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.
How a player macros is purely style. In terms of this you and I are the same.
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 will repeat the above:
UNLESS YOU ARE A SUPER FAST PLAYER NEVER NEVER NEVER USE RIGHT CLICK TO MOVE UNITS.
Maybe 3a4a5a6a7a is faster than 1a2a3a4a5a. But the difference between 3a4a5a6a7a and right clicking is very small. But if your units are ambushed the differences between your units fighting and dieing is quite big.
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.
50% of the time I think is a better estimate. You underrate hotkeys by a lot.
I still use hotkeys for a lot of stuff. I hotkey shuttles and carriers of course. I also hotkey my scouting probe of course. And, I also hotkey my first 12 units, be they rushing zealots vs toss or zerg, or my first set of goons vs terran. It's the other situations that I was talking about that hotkeys are pointless in.
No its not, if you are attacking with multiple groups that aren't hotkeyed their timing won't be as good.
For example, why hotkey nexus to produce probes? You can always go back to your nexus by pressing space key. If I hotkey my nexus to 0, I never use it anyways.
Someone made an excellent post about this.
Hotkey gateways to produce units in the middle of the battle? Who are you kidding? If you're building units in the middle of the battle you obviously arent controlling your units so you might as well not be looking at them either. I can click my minimap to go to my gates and select them and press the keyboard shortcut, and then press space bar to go back to the fight, than you can press 1-z 2-d 3-z 4-k etc, I guarantee it.
I want to focus on the bolded statement. That is simply not true. Anyone who is capable of producing like that (TheMarine does, for example), will be able to quickly do so while never not looking at the battle. Less clicks and less movement required as well. Therefore you are wrong.
What's the point of hotkeying only a half or a quarter of your gates anyways? If you aren't going to use them all, why even build them? When I go to build something, I do it with all my gates.
So you are at least building something while microing.
And Wax, when you call me slow, are you referring to my low apm? APM means nothing, what matters is how quickly you accomplish tasks. I accomplish the same number of tasks as you, I just use fewer clicks because I'm not wasting time setting hotkeys and cycling through them. Personally I'd say I'm faster than you, despite having lower apm. I think the pvp games that we play, where I consistantly outharass you, bear me out on that score.
APM is a reflection of speed, not necessarily what it really is. For instance, HovZ and I have about 150-160 APM when playing TvP. But he macros and micros much much better than I am.
On the other hand, one player with 300 APM is likely faster than one with 150 APM.
Amat I use both hands of course, in fact I use my hands far more equally than more people. I'd say that most of you are the one handed players, because you do so much more with your keyboard than you need to.
... Ok.
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On April 15 2004 09:28 STIMEY d okgm fish wrote:Show nested quote +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. the distinction between the speed of accomplishing tasks and APM is absurd? what the fuck? apm doesn't count minimap, f2 f3 f4, alt+c, it counts many things the same despite that some are much easier to do quickly (despite that one needs to do both of them) ... it's so easy to imagine an example where one raises their apm while the speed at which they accomplish tasks remains the same or is lowered, i won't even give you one.
APM doesn't count minimap, f1 f2, etc, because they don't accomplish anything. If an observer was just looking at a game with minimap, he shouldn't be considered a fast player, he's watching. Granted, press 1-1 or 2-2 to center on your units shouldn't be an action either, but its much faster than clicking (for those who are accustomed to hotkeys). Arguing that APM doesn't include minimap clicks is blind to the honest fact that minimap clicks do not determine speed. I do not know any player that doesn't click on the minimap to go around, for the most part.
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the point is that you can be doing things with your mouse that are very important to do yet are "reducing your apm" ... you click the minimap less, you scroll less, you use f2 f3 f4 less, your apm goes up! duh.. wtf.
and furthermore, among things that are counted they are not all counted the same, and some things people are generally faster at than others. let's say someone is faster at pressing 11 22 33 44 but sucks at selecting things with the mouse or giving move commands. so what do they do to boost their apm? select things less, move less, hotkey spam more.
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On April 15 2004 20:56 STIMEY d okgm fish wrote:
the point is that you can be doing things with your mouse that are very important to do yet are "reducing your apm" ... you click the minimap less, you scroll less, you use f2 f3 f4 less, your apm goes up! duh.. wtf.
and furthermore, among things that are counted they are not all counted the same, and some things people are generally faster at than others. let's say someone is faster at pressing 11 22 33 44 but sucks at selecting things with the mouse or giving move commands. so what do they do to boost their apm? select things less, move less, hotkey spam more. Are you going to turn this into a fake APM debate instead of a debate about speed?
What about a person who is not good at using hotkeys? Does he just select his units over and over?
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we have an epidemic of fucking slow people spamming their keys to raise their apm. let me share a thesis with u: exceeding nada's hotkey to mouse ratio when ur mouse is 1/3rd nada's is FUCKING DUMB IN THE ASS. we have no such epidemic of people being boxer-like with their mouse because pressing 11 22 33 44 is too hard.
On April 15 2004 21:02 RuGbUg wrote:
Are you going to turn this into a fake APM debate instead of a debate about speed?
What about a person who is not good at using hotkeys? Does he just select his units over and over?
"wtf.. "
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You are a real progamer when you use the default keys, any less makes you a noob.
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I tried playing with no hotkeys today, and it's not very hard to get 200apm. Using fkeys to click macro keeps apm about the same I think, if you're checking on the buildings as often as you do normally. Controlling units is alittle harder, but still doable. I was playing 3v3 as terran though, so massing marines which build fast played a big role in clicking. Maybe I'll try fkey macroing with hotkey unit control. Using fkeys to macro seemed kinda good 
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On April 15 2004 21:21 hasuwar wrote: I tried playing with no hotkeys today, and it's not very hard to get 200apm. Using fkeys to click macro keeps apm about the same I think, if you're checking on the buildings as often as you do normally. Controlling units is alittle harder, but still doable. I was playing 3v3 as terran though, so massing marines which build fast played a big role in clicking. Maybe I'll try fkey macroing with hotkey unit control. Using fkeys to macro seemed kinda good
how much do you move the screen and produce while microing and multitask in general in a 3v3 on bgh? can u post the rep? were you just clicking on your barracks as fast as you could or what? i'm not accusing u i just am curious how you stay so busy with no hotkeys in a 3v3 bgh of all things.. were you switching tasks often.. i dunno id like to lasgo it
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Valhalla18444 Posts
haha nice
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left hand is everything in modern bw
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Depends on the people playing stimey..they can be action packed, but usually not. I don't think I had to multi task that much, and it was a really short game.. like 11 minutes, so that played a role in it as well
http://hasuwar.isgsa.org/200apmnoHK.rep
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(compared to the example games provided in the last page)
gessfk 200apm 3v3 terran bgh no hotkeys
81 select per minute <-- twice as much as boxer and nada
56 move per minute <-- slightly more than boxer and nada
18 train per minute <-- more than nada and twice boxer's
18 rally per minute <-- less than half nada's, but more than boxer's
13 attack move per minute <-- less than nada, more than double boxer's
6 shift select per minute <-- 1 more than nada and boxer
of course only you really know the usefulness of what you're doing, but it looks like you're a living boxer clone, maybe twice as fast! imagine if you used hotkeys too!
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is everyone forgetting what APM is? actions per minute
now dont go tell me that __actions__ per minute mean shit 
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yep somuchbetter i guess now we all know gessfk is top 2 terran in korea
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MURICA15980 Posts
You can still waste clicks, but it'll still show speed in a general sense. I mean you can't seriously say a 100 APM person is faster than a 300 APM person, but when it only differs by like 40-50, it's not saying much as it could mean a lot of different things.
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All I know that I can't play terran or zerg without hotkeying units and facs/rax/hatches
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On April 15 2004 22:24 STIMEY d okgm fish wrote:
yep somuchbetter i guess now we all know gessfk is top 2 terran in korea
yep stimey so apm has absolutely no use anymore
(example)
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ugh pls dont talk to me anymoer rugbug
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If you're allowed to blatantly exaggerate, why aren't I?
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On April 15 2004 22:24 STIMEY d okgm fish wrote:
yep somuchbetter i guess now we all know gessfk is top 2 terran in korea
Damn tootin'.
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wtf did i exaggerate... wtf
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"are hotkeys really that great?"
No, they suck. Close topic.
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People who spam click sometimes do it just to keep their hands moving and get prepared for actual usage of what would be idle hands. At the start of a game there is very little to do and its not spam if you're switching between doing useful things even if you've already done them and just switching between tasks and coordinating. Eventually you won't have time to spam click if you're playing your best game because it'll only work against you. Seen ogogo's left hand? Thats mostly spam until its being used in a battle when his hand goes EVEN faster and more insane. Hotkeys are godlike.
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are hotkeys really that great?
yes
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EPT
