I just picked up starcraft broodwar and i am finding i cant figure out any good way to hotkey things. I am asking this from a terran viewpoint.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Things I think I know Only units should be hotkeyed except for scans on far hotkeys like 9.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Things I want to know What do you use your f keys for? Like what screen save do you do for each hotkey? (i.e f2 is for rax, f3 facts, f4 rally point??)
How many f keys are usuable?? I think my keyboard is messed up cause some dont work.
Do you only really use 1 rally point all game? It seems re rallying structures would be very hard.
Which units should go on which keys? Marines 1-3 ive been doing as well as tanks 4-6. Rest are just w/e.
Whatever other hotkey tricks there are.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THIS IS FOR A TERRAN MOSTLY!!! But i would be interested in any zerg info as well!
I'm Protoss, so what I use them for might not be terribly applicable. However, they are terribly useful for changing the rally points on all your buildings. Rebind one f key over top of production, the other over top of new rally point. But usually I use them for my nexuses to quickly pull workers when getting dropped.
Only f2, f3, f4 are useable.
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When I offrace, late game I like to have 0 9 and 8 as scans- but maybe a real Terran could tell you better
- generally hotkeys depend a lot on preference I'd hotkey more than just units though, first two CCs are important (main, nat) and first 1-3 barracks, later on you can just keep one on a hotkey and double tap
- only f2 f3 f4 are usable
- if you really need to re-rallye a lot of buildings it can be done fairly quickly using f-keys
F2F3F4 - The very best players use these for extra Command Centers, while the lower levels use them for saving the location of Barracks or Factories or Rally points. (F2F3F4 are the only usable F keys)
Never switch your rally, you always want the rally to be your natural choke, this stops any attacks from happening when you are elsewhere, the most important base is your main base, and for its natural choke to be naked is very tempting for any unit that is good enough to make it past.
You should know that it's ok to hotkey buildings, especially early in the game when you need to macro your command centers while scouting. Any thing you want to be able to center your screen on, you should hotkey that thing.
There's lots of pretty standard setups. tvz is 1, 3 marine, 2 medics, 4 tanks or marines, 5 science vessels, 6 barrack, 7 another production facility, maybe starport 890 scan.
f keys can be used for more than just rallying and production. They are good for that, but they are also good for pulling workers to another base when there is a storm drop or the like.
when i played bw f2 was usually my main cc, f3 was my natural ( usually switch to every new & fully saturated expo) and f4 for rally point (this allows you to pull workers fast if they are getting harassed)
1-7 for units (depending on what you are comfortable with you should key certain units like you mentioned marines 1-3 tanks 4-6 etc)
8 for main production area (keyed to an area that f2(main cc) doesnt see) i also change this to production places if you have them at a different area on the map (like your cross map expo)
9 and 0 for scans
you should change your rally point as the game goes on since sometimes you don't want to rally into the enemy just to suicide, but if you are pushing sometimes you want to rally closer to not waste time running all your units to your enemy. Although some people use one rally point all game which is perfectly fine, but it depends on your play style
also there are two different play styles which has its ups and downs, some people use 1->n for buildings instead of units, so it allows you to spam units faster while watching the battle, while people who use 1->n for units has to take a few seconds to produce units by looking at their base, but they can micro their units alot better
Wow great responses. I am still wondering about the building hotkeying and rallying. When i have like 5-6 rax i never know what to do because isnt it to rally you need to click each one and then click the spot to go? That takes quite some time for me!
Another question... is marine really M to build!!! Thats so out of the way!!! what hand/finger should i be using? Right now iam using my left hand (keyboard hand) and my index finger. Its so time consuming as well lol.
On September 03 2011 05:12 wishbones wrote: Never switch your rally, you always want the rally to be your natural choke, this stops any attacks from happening when you are elsewhere, the most important base is your main base, and for its natural choke to be naked is very tempting for any unit that is good enough to make it past.
You will want to double tap one of your Barracks or Factory hotkeys and then mass select/train them all.
Another good reason to never change the rally from your Natural choke is because any attacks made internally on your main base, can be easily put to rest if your reinforcements are in your natural waiting to be commanded.
F2F3F4 - The very best players use these for extra Command Centers, while the lower levels use them for saving the location of Barracks or Factories or Rally points. (F2F3F4 are the only usable F keys)
Never switch your rally, you always want the rally to be your natural choke, this stops any attacks from happening when you are elsewhere, the most important base is your main base, and for its natural choke to be naked is very tempting for any unit that is good enough to make it past.
Pretty much sums it up, that's what I use and that's what I think everyone should use
On September 03 2011 05:25 Sc2ttyl wrote: Another question... is marine really M to build!!! Thats so out of the way!!! what hand/finger should i be using? Right now iam using my left hand (keyboard hand) and my index finger. Its so time consuming as well lol.
I believe you should be using your thumb to press "M"
Always, always, always, do what you feel most comfortable with and what works best.
I can spare you mine for Z (ok briefly, 5 and up hatches, all else units) or P (4-6 gates 7 robo 890 nex, all else units) here's some input from a Terran.
Never put your 2 first production facilities (so first 2 rax TvZ or first 2 facts elsewhere) on 3 and 4, that sucks! That way you're sure to have to re-bind before you need to, put them on 4 and 5 instead. It's just as easy to 4t5t or 4m5m as 3t4t or 3m4m, but it lets you use 1,2 and 3 instead of just 1 and 2.
Scans on 0, 9 8 etc are awesome, because if you can learn to use them (I hear dem dere kids nowadays don't like making such a long hike across the keyboard, but it's NP) they're really convenient: Bind 'em with Right Ctlr and your thumb, piece of cake.
Then there are matchup specific setups, and other ideas you can play with.
I like to keep my Starport on 7 8 (8 usually gets used by a scan soon enough), because that's a pretty important building mid-game onwards in all matchups (Vessels and Dropships); you want to make sure it's workin.
Try the idea of having an important tech building hotkeyed, such as Acad, Ebay, Armory or even Sci Facility, and though I'm not in the habit (or the APM) to make great use of it, it's great for checking progress of crucial research or production without having to go back to your base and finding it. This is especially useful for Ling Speed, Lurker Upgrade or Storm.....
You can try to only have your macro from hotkeys (e.g. 4 5 6 7 8 all facts), and while this is nice for an aggressive timing where you can't afford to look away from the action, once you get more than max 5 production facilities, you're gonna have to look at your base anyways, so it's best to get used to jumping back to your macro area (F2, or double-tapping).
A note on F-Keys. It's great to use them, and all power to you if you can pull off altering them regularly, but (speakin from experience) unless you're used to it, it's quite hard to move your F-locations around and not get messed up. Having them on your main/nat/3rd are nice for pulling SCV's quickly (and macro?), and there's the idea that you can switch them, use them, then set them back. That's hard, and if you've got them F2 macro area F3 rally F4 forward rally position (i.e. in a push) you can switch your rallys really fuckin fast, which is nice (:
Try to stick to a consistent hotkey setup (ya for anything) for your unit groups. Baf TvP can be a little messy, but esp in the other matchups, always know where your more important, your harass and your [i]main army[/] are binded to.
For example I keep my dropships in TvT on 1; nice, clear, and pretty hard to confuse and accidentally suicide on a turret line. While it's not always consistent I also try to keep my harass (vults) on 3, though that takes getting used to and I might change it.
TvP I keep my vessels(+ a few gols) on 1, and everything else on the others. Do try to keep Tanks on a hotkey of their own in case you need to siege up in an emergency, same goes for vults and mines.
TvZ takes the most getting used to (and APM {: ) because (hopefully) unlike the other matchups you're likely gonna have fun with Medics and Marines instead of mech, usually, unless you're a kind person to yourself and decide to mech anyways. A nice thing I've adopted in the early game is first raxes on 4 5 6, medics on 2 and marines/fb's on 1 3 (Chef ya beat me to it). That way, once you transition into having some tanks and vessels, you can keep your medics on 2 and group your vessels (and my preference is tanks with them) on 1, on high priority. You really want your marines/fb's on their own hotkey so you can stim easily.
Misc:
4m5m with your thumb on M When going 2-port-wraith, I like to have my starports on 6w7w , W with pinky. Hotkeys are awesome, use 'em! Don't rally all your production building on one spot, spread 'em out, making specific categories of units (e.g. medics) more easily detachable from the main mass. This is where F keys are awesome: with 4 rax, instead of rallying them all to the same dot, go F2, select one, F3 (without moving mouse) and rally directly where that building corresponds to on the screen for your rallys, repeat. So: F2 select (don't move mouse) F3 right click, repeat. finally, if you feel you don't have as much gas as you should (TvT yo!) take a sec to check that all your refineries are running properly (: Bof I write too much
Shift + f2 assigns that screen space to f2. So whenever you hit f2, the screen will centre on that area. The nice thing about this is you don't need a building to hop to that location.
So in the example above, f2 changes the screen to be overtop of your factories (assuming you assigned f2 to be there) click factory of course selects that factory, f3 switches to whereever you assigned it (presumably the new rally point.) However, hitting f3 doesn't deselect the factory when you switch screens- which double tapping a hotkeyed building would do.) So then you right click which sets the rally point like normal.
Because switching screens with f keys doesn't delselect units, that is why f keys are used to save workers from storm or reaver drops. Scrolling is slow, minimap is imprecise, and double tapping delselects the workers you want to save.
F2F3F4 - The very best players use these for extra Command Centers, while the lower levels use them for saving the location of Barracks or Factories or Rally points. (F2F3F4 are the only usable F keys)
Never switch your rally, you always want the rally to be your natural choke, this stops any attacks from happening when you are elsewhere, the most important base is your main base, and for its natural choke to be naked is very tempting for any unit that is good enough to make it past.
pretty much this; in early mid-game top players would have all of their raxes (tvz) or facts (tvp/tvt) hotkeyed 4-8.
it's okay to rally at your nat HOWEVER once you're confident in your multitasking you can rally on top of units easily with 4-8 so that your reinforcements go straight to your main army. this saves a lot of macro/micro time and is efficient to do in early-mid game. once in late game though, you only hotkey 1 rax on 6 to ping back to one cluster of raxes. another cluster on 7
EPT
