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On January 01 2009 08:10 Grobyc wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2009 07:55 Mastermind wrote:
I'm surprised there are people who dont know how to use control, thats a pretty basic feature of the game. I've known this stuff for ages, but I guess it would be helpful for those who didn;t know. I use it all teh time for selecting marines from MMF to stim or target sunkens, that way my firebat fends off the lings and my medics dont run up to the sunken. Many uses indeed, but I would think that everyone should know this already.
IT useful for people like me. Iv been taking sc a little more seriously for about 5 months. Got Battlechest in Jan 29, 2008 :S
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A little off topic, but this method can be used with the "magic box" to doublecast spells or lay mines, but vults are easy to select.
Doublecasting storms vs lings/hydras is fun.
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On January 02 2009 07:09 Carkling wrote:
can we have more information on the ALT things? :D
Holding Alt and clicking a unit selects the group that the unit was last previously selected in. (this is not limited to a ctrl-group)
I remember this being useful when trying to move massive amounts of zerglings that were in a big group.(sauron) I could group them in a shift box, then when I needed them, I simply needed to alt+click the zergling and send them in. ALMOST as efficient as another hotkey. It also ensures that the zerglings I'm selecting are in a nice group, instead of scattered. That way they don't get trapped.
It was also useful if I just needed a group of zerglings for a flank, but didn't have any room in hotkeys (I favored hatcheries on hotkeys in midgame). Using the Alt trick, I could send in 12 lings (or more) quickly, without having to deal with shift or dragging.
Lastly, I used Alt if I couldn't remember where I hotkeyed a particular unit. If I saw an idle attacking unit, while engaging, I figured that that unit was also part of a group that wasn't doing what it should be doing. So I would Alt+click the idle unit and send the whole group in again.
All these were methods that helped a noob zerg deal with huge amounts of units.
Hope it helps someone.
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That's where i know i've been playing too much Starcraft. (didn't read the whole thread obv so sorry)
I learnt nothing !
But it's always good to share it with everyone of course.
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On January 02 2009 03:13 pangshai wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2009 02:55 xhuwin wrote:
As WhenHellFreezes mentioned, holding ALT and clicking a unit will give you the last group the unit was in. So say you have zealots A, B, C, D and dragoon E, F, G. If you select them all and tell them to move some where, then go macro, then come back, alt leftclick on any (A through G) of them will get you the entire group. If before that, you selected just the goons only (EFG) to micro them, then alt clicking on E,F,G will give you the entire last group that unit was in (all the goons, EFG). I don't understand why you would want to use alt though. So assuming that A B C D are zealots and E F G are dragoons, and you select the dragoons using control click to micro them, why can't you just use 1 (or whatever the hotkey group that all the units were in) to select everything again? Show nested quote +On January 02 2009 02:55 xhuwin wrote:
Also, in the OP, the first situation, with all the drones clumped together surruonded by other rally units, you can ctrlclick all drones then shift click the minerals, and only the non-mining drones will follow that command. The problem with that is that when you control click the drones, not all 3 drones that are not mining will necessarily be selected, since the selection is random, ie you might get 2 drones at your rally point and another 10 drones already mining.
Well it's just another way to get faster multitasking.
On this case you may want to scroll a little far from the mineral and this way you'd get like 6 or 7 drones (Cause it's pretty uncommon to have like 30 drones in 1 base right ?)
Works better than drag-boxing and then ctrl it in the frame if the drones are somewhat spread enough where you can't have all of them without your frame being full of whatever units it has in the rally point.
I think it's a matter of preference and experience.
Edit : Oh and about the alt key, it has 2 purposes :
- Like xhuwin mentionned, if you don't have any free hotkey, using it could be like a relatively fast yet temporary hotkey (Won't last long though, probably not more than 5 sec i guess ? I don't know really never investigated it so far yet).
- And centering your hotkeyed group, be it units or building (i think).
Edit 2 : An example of using alt key.
ZvT : you have F2'ed ur main and F3'ed ur expand. And then : Oh shit, dropship in my expand > ctrl click drone f2 right click mineral and then get a bunch of units attacking the area dropped. But he already left and your drones are almost at ur main, what to do ? Simply alt + left click one of the maynarded drones and f3 right click minerals. I'm commanding my bitches better than kerrigan ~
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On January 02 2009 14:39 RaiZ wrote:
ZvT : you have F2'ed ur main and F3'ed ur expand. And then : Oh shit, dropship in my expand > ctrl click drone f2 right click mineral and then get a bunch of units attacking the area dropped. But he already left and your drones are almost at ur main, what to do ? Simply alt + left click one of the maynarded drones and f3 right click minerals. I'm commanding my bitches better than kerrigan ~
I see how it can be useful now. I was under the impression that alt only worked when you had assigned it to a preexisting hotkey group instead of just selecting the group that it was in previously. Are there any other uses for the alt key?
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Thanks on the info abt alt clicking!
I did some little testing on alt clicking to recall group
After selecting 10 groups, i cannot alt-recall my 1st group while i can alt- recall my 2nd group.
Time doen't seem to be a big factor. I can still recall my 12 lings after 1 minute, which is more than enough for rushing into a battle.
So from what i've gathered, you can only recall your previous 9 groups that have been selected.
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Edit: Apparently you can't deselect a unit type froma group in the manner I described. My bad. I must have been thinking of another RTS. I thought I remembered doing this a while back while playing terran, but I tried it out and it doesn't work.
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On January 03 2009 03:58 Loophole wrote:
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You can deselect all the vultures selected by holding shift + alt and then clicking the wireframe of 1 of the vultures. Now you have just medic and marine. This can be usefull as well if you are grabbing a mix of lings, hydra, and lurk, and you want to flank with the ling/hydra while allowing the lurk to continue to move towards the sopt you originally sent them so they can burrow. Just grab some units, alt+shift click a lurk wireframe, and flank away.
Now that's something I didn't know. It's really not THAT practical for a protoss player anyway, but I'd love to learn all the little details SC has been hiding from me 
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Yeah, I hardly ever use it as a P player myself, but when I am messing around with friends and playing T, I end up using it a lot to make groups of m&m or m&m&f.
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Katowice25012 Posts
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Excellent guide. It's little things like this that often get forgotten.
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On January 03 2009 04:08 Naib wrote:Show nested quote +On January 03 2009 03:58 Loophole wrote:
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You can deselect all the vultures selected by holding shift + alt and then clicking the wireframe of 1 of the vultures. Now you have just medic and marine. This can be usefull as well if you are grabbing a mix of lings, hydra, and lurk, and you want to flank with the ling/hydra while allowing the lurk to continue to move towards the sopt you originally sent them so they can burrow. Just grab some units, alt+shift click a lurk wireframe, and flank away. Now that's something I didn't know. It's really not THAT practical for a protoss player anyway, but I'd love to learn all the little details SC has been hiding from me
I still haven't managed it to work... Always heard about that as a legend. Do it works for you ?
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It may be because you play terran, but shift-adding to groups is crazy useful. When you go back to check your rallies, it's easier to add to your groups already in place just by hitting shift and the number of your control group than to select your control group, hold shit while double clicking and then rehotkeying. For PvT, this is huge, especially since most of the time you want your groups separated into goons and zeals. Just control-click goons, and shift-add to your goon group. Then rinse and repeat with your zeals.
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I figured this out over time, but it is really helpful information. Good job compiling the info., I'm sure it will help newer players or players who did not know this before.
You mention that you shouldn't ctrl + click a unit type at your rallied units because it will pick units that are stuck in the middle also and will lead to repetition. That is a good point, but I still use this method and overcome this difficulty by simply spreading out the units really quickly before I make my groups. It just takes a few fast clicks of spreading out the units and then just ctrl+clicking the groups. I don't know if it is more or less clicks than if you were to do it your method where you fill up the groups again later, but I find it pretty efficient.
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Calgary25988 Posts
Added to the recommended threads. Thanks for writing this!
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Yeah, it's a nice read. My problem is that I actually know all these things and it doesn't help me get any better 
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Netherlands4511 Posts
I didn't know/use a couple of things in this, nice 
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