Hi. I've been trying to learn how to play BW lately as a zerg player, but I've been having a hard time learning due to the mechanical limits (aka 1 building per hotkey, and 18 unit limit for army). I've been trying to figure out the best way to organize my hotkeys for control groups. Is there a particular way to organize that would help a newcomer like me?

PiSan

United States160 Posts

January 23 2017 19:35 GMT

I wish it were an 18 unit limit.

I've been struggling with this as a fellow zerg player myself. What I've come to realize with my own play and watching the pros is that you will not be able to rely on hotkeying your army as a zerg player. I believe Savior was known for only using 2 control groups for units and used the rest for buildings.

My typical playstyle is to assign hatcheries to 5-0 so that I can keep constant production while my focus is away from home. Early game I'll assign control groups to my lings, then my muta group or maybe a group of attacking lurkers. Usually at this point, production has gotten large enough that each cycle is producing more units than I can handle with only 4 unit hotkeys. I think the best solution is to have really good mouse accuracy and timing to send large armies around the map. This is still something I'm struggling with, but I don't think there is an alternative as a Zerg player with > 60 units sitting at a rally point.

TheWanderingZebra

United States16 Posts

January 23 2017 20:13 GMT

Oh wait, the limit is 16 right? For some reason I thought it was 18. I know it's 16 since I use that limit to tell how many workers I have on my mining bases.

Also, thanks for the advice.

kogeT

Poland2037 Posts

January 23 2017 20:20 GMT

Limit is 12.

Best hotkey pattern for zerg is 1,2,3,4 for units and 5,6,7,8,9,0 for hatcheries. (you start with 5 for your 1st hatch) You really want to avoid hot keying more units than 4 groups, but as the game goes you want to assign more than that to make good flanks for example (and macroing via hotkeyes is also less important as the game goes on). It just sucks to re hotkey your hatcheries as zerg.

halomonian

Brazil255 Posts

January 23 2017 22:04 GMT

As someone who plays protoss and has no idea, what about clustering hatches when possible and zipping across for macro cycles? or using camera hot keys?

jimminy_kriket

Canada5501 Posts

January 23 2017 22:10 GMT

On January 24 2017 07:04 halomonian wrote:
As someone who plays protoss and has no idea, what about clustering hatches when possible and zipping across for macro cycles? or using camera hot keys?

This is what many zergs do in late game. If you get to the point where it's viable to add more hatcheries than you have hotkeys for start grouping them and using a camera hotkey to view them all then you can swipe over them to select the larva and build units that way.

Koget already posted what is probably the most general and best hotkeys to use as zerg, if you really want to get technical you can open up some progamer replays in bwchart and look at what hotkeys they use. There are quite a few different patterns that people use.

TheWanderingZebra

United States16 Posts

January 23 2017 22:15 GMT

Is it 12, just checked. Weird, I thought it was 16 since it looked like 8 per row instead of 6 on the army select

SCC-Faust

United States3736 Posts

January 23 2017 22:45 GMT

I personally use this setup:

Early game:

1, 2, 3 - Units.
4, 5, 6 - Hatcheries. ALWAYS 4 is my main Hatchery, 5 is my natural Hatchery, and 6 is my 3rd base Hatchery.
F2, F3, F4 - On top of 4, 5, and 6 Hatches. I use the camera keys to drone drill and move Drones to other bases.

Mid & late game:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 - Units
7, 8, 9, 0 - Hatcheries for my fourth, fifth, sixth, etc. bases. Never macro Hatcheries, only base Hatcheries.
F2, F3, F4 - Take my main, natural, and third Hatcheries off hotkeys and purely use camera hotkeys to maintain them. Frees up 3 hotkeys for units.

I'll sometimes flat out just do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 for units late game ZvP when my bases are established and saturated. Everyone does something slightly different but this works for me and camera keys are my biggest sAviOr. It is also why I put my third hatchery at my natural in ZvT rather than hide it in my base - so I can just macro from it with F3. And then 6 and 7 are my 3rd and 4th expansions which I take after I move out with my lurkers.

Also a huge advantage to my setup is you will have every expansion covered. Camera hotkeys maintain your first three bases and hotkeys will cover every other base. Even if you are splitting the map in a long ass ZvT or ZvP. This is really good for responding to drops, harass, and just pressure on multiple bases. It takes a ton of practice to really put it to use but I feel like it has paid off a ton for me and is one of my strongest suits. I have fast reaction times (but my responses are usually shit because I panic, although I do clean up bases easily. I just tend to send too many control groups to the drops/harass).

Liquid`Drone

Norway28647 Posts

January 23 2017 22:55 GMT

I use 1-3 unit 4-9 hatcheries 0 for queens/overlords if I'm dropping. At some point 4 stops being a hatchery and becomes units again. Then I try to make sure that I have 4 hatcheries in one screen so I can just double tap 6 and press ctrl-larva and z and then I built 24 zerglings.

It's certainly tricky when you get to like 15-20 minutes of a zvp game and you have 120 units you wanna bring to a battle. Generally, I just have 36 units that I actually micro with, and then I move those units around the field, then I go to the screen where I have 70 of my other units waiting, tell like 36 of them to attack move to that one location on the map where his units are nearby, and then I micro my other 36 so they end up arriving at roughly the same time in a nice flank. So then even though I only had 36 units that I controlled, I ended up attacking him with more than 70. And then when that battle nears its end, I've already hotkeyed 36 new units from the remaining group that was left behind in the first skirmish, and those I start to micro with and try to flank with and all that, and then I tell another 36 or so units from the rally point location to attack somewhere, and then I use those 36 I have hotkeyed to either join up with those or attack some other location.

sabas123

Netherlands3122 Posts

January 23 2017 23:00 GMT

#10

Wasn't it standard to have 5-9 for hatcheries?

wishbonesaka

Canada117 Posts

January 23 2017 23:12 GMT

#11

i think whatever is comfortable for you, and in time you will just get quicker at macroing your hatcheries that are not on hotkeys with repetition, just gotta get used to doing it for now.