For those of us new to SC2 but used to BW, there are some cool (and perhaps useful) things that you can take advantage of in the new interface. Most of them come from things I've read in the SC2 forum. This thread WILL NOT talk about any unit-specific strategies as balance is still subject to change, etc.
I'll keep the post updated as people share what they've discovered. Yes it's being updated, except only with relevant and useful info.
General
Using 'Tab' when you have multiple unit types selected will cycle between them. 'Shift'+'Tab' will cycle backwards.
Hitting 'F1' selects an idle worker. 'Ctrl'+'F1' selects all idle workers.
You can keep HP bars turned on all the time from the options menu.
Turning on building grids in the options menu makes walling a lot easier.
'Shift' queuing commands now work with stuff like siege and blink.
It's also possible to 'Shift' queue waypoints now.
If you have multiple workers selected, you can issue multiple build commands and they'll each build one; extra workers will continue whatever they were doing.
Hitting 'Backspace' jumps between your town halls.
'Alt'+'F' changes team colors to you = green, allies = yellow, and opponents = red.
'Ctrl'+'Alt'+'F' brings up a framerate counter
Terran
Calling down mules directly on minerals makes them to auto-mine.
SCVs can be set to auto-repair by hitting 'Alt'+'R'.
Use 'A' (scan-move) to have medivacs to follow your army
Zerg
Have your queens hotkeyed with your hatcheries so you can inject larvae by clicking on the wire frames.
You can give eggs their own move command so that the units will move there once they hatch, regardless of what the hatchery's rally point is.
Protoss
If you have one hotkey that just contains all your buildings, then you can chrono boost with by clicking on the building's wire frames without looking at your base.
Pressing 'W' selects all your warpgates (and excludes normal gateways).
When building from warpgates, holding down 'Shift' lets you warp in the same unit multiple times without clicking its hotkey again.
You can tell units warping in to move before they're done warping in, and they'll move there as soon as they finish.
i'm really not to sure about the idle worker thing, i remember i used to love that in age of empires but this just makes macro and econ so much easier. I've seen lots of people lose games in BW because they have no worker micro and have tons of idle units now this is like non-issue.
On March 07 2010 04:28 zealing wrote: I've seen lots of people lose games in BW because they have no worker micro and have tons of idle units now this is like non-issue.
Yes BW had an outdated UI... there were tons of mechanical roadblocks for players in BW that had nothing to do with strategy at all.
And this advice to keep all units in 1 group may not be optimal. It's kinda like having a blob vs lurkers... it just wasn't the best way to go and you had to spread out.
you can bind baracks starports and factories all with different addons to 1 hotkey and press tab to cycle them the different building/addon, if you press shift and tab at the same time it cycles backwards
dont know if its something every one knows already haha :D
A few other tips are to turn on building grids in the UI as it makes doing walls incredibly easy. Also, alt-t now turns enemies red rather than shift tab.
You generally need to have 1 queen for each hatchery.
Terran
versus zerg banshees can really harass and really keep the zerg from expanding/keep the zerg in his/her base.
Researching the Hellion's upgrade can really make zerglings and drones burn to a crisp in just a few seconds.
Do not agree with your zerg advice. If you macro constantly there is no way you will be able to support double queen off of just 2 bases unless you are building extremely cheap units.
How does hotkeying queen/hatch together work? Don't you need to target the hatchery with inject larvae for it to work anyway, which means you'd have to look at the hatch? Or is there some way to do it via hotkeys that i'm missing?
wow, how did i get top 10 platinum without knowing F1 and W = Warp Gate
so many times have i cued in units in ONE of many gates (hotkey grouped) because it wasn't transformed into a warp gate and couldn't call in extra units now it won't happen again
On March 07 2010 05:34 faction123 wrote: How does hotkeying queen/hatch together work? Don't you need to target the hatchery with inject larvae for it to work anyway, which means you'd have to look at the hatch? Or is there some way to do it via hotkeys that i'm missing?
hmmm... I tend to bind 1 queen/hatchery pair per hotkey which works pretty well since you only need 1 hatchery/base so you don't need that many hatcheries.
On March 07 2010 05:34 faction123 wrote: How does hotkeying queen/hatch together work? Don't you need to target the hatchery with inject larvae for it to work anyway, which means you'd have to look at the hatch? Or is there some way to do it via hotkeys that i'm missing?
You can target the hatchery's icon/wireframe in the unit selection area at the bottom of the screen instead of the physical hatchery itself.
On March 07 2010 04:28 zealing wrote: i'm really not to sure about the idle worker thing, i remember i used to love that in age of empires but this just makes macro and econ so much easier. I've seen lots of people lose games in BW because they have no worker micro and have tons of idle units now this is like non-issue.
The people who usually have workers inactive, will likely not even know about F1, but more than likely won't even remember to hit F1 thereby leaving their workers inactive anyways.
I've got some Terran-Related tricks, but it's mostly for very new players, so most ppl will already know this stuff I guess:
Tanks: - If you use "shift-click" to "stack up" commands, you can also use "E" or "D" to tell them to Siege when arrived at the Location or unsiege and then continue to the targeted Location. I think the same works for Valkyries. - If your Tanks are in Siegemode and you wan't them to attack several Units, use "shift-click" to let them target one Unit after the other. This way, the AI will automatically distribute the DMG in the best possible way, so that you don't use up 10 tankshots on one target, while the other enemy-units are still alive.
MBS: I don't know what that "bug" or however you wan't to call it is, but in my experience, if you have the same Buildings but with different Addons in one group, they don't seem to build Units if you just spam for example "A" for Marines, even though they could be built in Raxes with both the Addons and even without Addons. So it's better to just have the same Buildings in one Group with the same Addons.
Dropships: To unload Units from Dropships, don't use the "D" for Dropping them all on the same space, but click on the little images of the Units to unload them while flying. If you wan't to do large drops, just have all of the Dropships on one hotkey together and every single one on another one. That way you can give them all a direction to fly and you can just click the hotkey and then the little Icon of the Units to unload them very fast.
Building in general: If you wan't to build several Buildings at once, you don't have to select an SCV and then the Building - go back to select another SCV and build another Building etc. but you can just select a bunch of SCV's and tell them to build the Building you want them to and shift-click them back to mining minerals. The AI will do the rest. ^^'
Repair: This one is just to avoid making stupid mistakes: Use "R" to repair and don't just right-click on the unit/sctructure you want to repair, or your SCV may end up in a Dropship or Bunker. ^^'
You can use M-command on a Marine to make your medivacs follow your M&M army without picking them up.
Also, with Zerg you can select a handful of drones then assign them to build buildings. Useful when maynarding drones and you want to build 2 extractors when your drones reach the destination. Select drones > maynard to a mineral patch > Build extractor and place on each geyser. The drones will still start mining minerals, except for two of them who will build extractor
On March 07 2010 22:17 zatic wrote: But then they won't heal right? Fail to see the point. Just put them in the same groups as the marines.
They will still heal. If you put them in the same group the medivacs will get to their destination before the other units, the disadvantages of which I'm sure should be obvious to you.
As Zerg, put an overlord at possible expansions and have them drop creep to prevent expansion. Especially on islands as it forces them to get units to get rid of your overlord.
When you have burrow, have a single ling burrowed at the CC/nexus/hatch position at a possible expansion. This forces your opponent to scout it with a detector (for T forces them to use scan) and vs ppl who arent that familiar with the game will be confused.
Put a small group of banelings burrowed at chokepoints (not necessarily ramps) and explode them from underground. You dont require 20 banelings at the samespot, a group of 20 marines flocked will pretty much die by a couple banelings. You can also have your banelings directly behind those vision distortions (the high grass or gas from the ground). This is essentially increases the chance that banes run into the enemy army instead of getting destroyed.
You can use a changeling from overseer not only to scout, but for example you move the changeling somewhere and let it wait. You simply check after a while whether it has transformed. When it has transformed you will know the enemy has passed at that point (usefull when you have more things to do).
With a single creeptumor you can cover pretty much the whole map with creep. Use it!
On March 07 2010 23:28 Koffiegast wrote: As Zerg, put an overlord at possible expansions and have them drop creep to prevent expansion. Especially on islands as it forces them to get units to get rid of your overlord.
When you have burrow, have a single ling burrowed at the CC/nexus/hatch position at a possible expansion. This forces your opponent to scout it with a detector (for T forces them to use scan) and vs ppl who arent that familiar with the game will be confused.
Put a small group of banelings burrowed at chokepoints (not necessarily ramps) and explode them from underground. You dont require 20 banelings at the samespot, a group of 20 marines flocked will pretty much die by a couple banelings. You can also have your banelings directly behind those vision distortions (the high grass or gas from the ground). This is essentially increases the chance that banes run into the enemy army instead of getting destroyed.
You can use a changeling from overseer not only to scout, but for example you move the changeling somewhere and let it wait. You simply check after a while whether it has transformed. When it has transformed you will know the enemy has passed at that point (usefull when you have more things to do).
With a single creeptumor you can cover pretty much the whole map with creep. Use it!
Thanks, but please stay on topic. This is for UI tips, not general gameplay tips.
On March 07 2010 23:35 zatic wrote: Thanks, but please stay on topic. This is for UI tips, not general gameplay tips.
Ow my bad.
As zerg you can put queens and hatcheries in the same group to have queens easily larva inject the hatches and to easily massproduce by having all hatches in the same group. Using shift you can easily have the AI manage multiple queens on multiple hatches and efficiently inject without having to look away from battle.
Using Tab you can easily go through your whole army to find the right class, useful when you have infestors with you.
On March 09 2010 00:54 Piousflea wrote: Wow I am a noob, thanks to SC1 I never even thought of hotkeying a unit and a building together.
Being able to put queen + hatch together will make Zerg macro 100x easier.
Yeah that should help a bunch but I'm still fumbling a bit with this so just to make sure.
Whenever I hotkey a bunch of hatcheries together with one or more queens it seems like it's always the queen that responds to the hotkey. So they only way to actualle make drones and units is to first hit TAB to highlight the hatcheries and then TAB again to be able to inject larvae on the wireframe. Is this right?
On March 07 2010 22:17 zatic wrote: But then they won't heal right? Fail to see the point. Just put them in the same groups as the marines.
They will still heal. If you put them in the same group the medivacs will get to their destination before the other units, the disadvantages of which I'm sure should be obvious to you.
Exactly, you don't want your medivacs to either reveal your position or run into hydras before the rines get there.
On March 07 2010 04:28 zealing wrote: i'm really not to sure about the idle worker thing, i remember i used to love that in age of empires but this just makes macro and econ so much easier. I've seen lots of people lose games in BW because they have no worker micro and have tons of idle units now this is like non-issue.
and how is that a bad thing? shouldn't a strategy game be about strategy, game sense and reaction time? i for one am extremely pleased with blizzards effort to cut out all the unnecessary spam and mindless muscle memory to focus more on the actual gameplay
On March 07 2010 22:17 zatic wrote: But then they won't heal right? Fail to see the point. Just put them in the same groups as the marines.
They will still heal. If you put them in the same group the medivacs will get to their destination before the other units, the disadvantages of which I'm sure should be obvious to you.
Exactly, you don't want your medivacs to either reveal your position or run into hydras before the rines get there.
Medivacs have a scanmove ability (hotkey A), that can be put on a single marine so Medivacs stick to/heal a single group of Marines instead of moving ahead.
On March 07 2010 22:07 kickinhead wrote: MBS: I don't know what that "bug" or however you wan't to call it is, but in my experience, if you have the same Buildings but with different Addons in one group, they don't seem to build Units if you just spam for example "A" for Marines, even though they could be built in Raxes with both the Addons and even without Addons. So it's better to just have the same Buildings in one Group with the same Addons.
This isn't really a bug. It just treats each Barracks, Barracks+Reactor, and Barracks+Techlab as 3 separate building types, so you have to tab through them to build out of them (essentially the same thing as if you had a Barracks and a Factory selected together).
On March 07 2010 22:07 kickinhead wrote: Repair: This one is just to avoid making stupid mistakes: Use "R" to repair and don't just right-click on the unit/sctructure you want to repair, or your SCV may end up in a Dropship or Bunker. ^^'
Also useful: right-clicking on the repair icon in the UI sets repair on autocast. This makes SCVs automatically repair nearby damaged units/buildings.
I think you should be a little more explicit about the advantages of the intelligent queue. Here's two examples I've seen hinted at in the thread but not explicitly stated:
Workers are smart when you queue buildings. For example you can select 5 SCVs and shift-build two supply depots, only two SCVs will move to build. This is more useful on zerg since you don't have to worry about queueing them back to mining - select all workers and shift build two extractors, only two (the closest two) will stop mining to build.
Grouping queens with hatcheries is extremely powerful, in fact if you get to the point where you have 1 queen per hatchery it's necessary IMO. You hit the ctrl group (4 for me) and hit R, then hold shift and click in rapid succession on each of the hatcheries icons in the selection display. The queens are intelligent enough to knwo who should cast inject larva on each, so now all your hatcheries are instantly injected and you didn't have to move your view.
I guess I should elaborate, the issue with doing the quick injecting when you have more hatcheries than queens is that I haven't figured out exactly how the units are ordered in the selection display, so sometimes you can have a situation where the queen moves to inject a hatchery before injecting the one near her. More investigation needed in that situation.
i've got some protoss and UI related questions, hope somebody can clear things up for me.
1. usually i group my nexussess (?) in the 4th control group, all producing buildings in the 5th (warpgates, robotics etc.) and units in 1-3. first of all, what could i improve? are there easier, more common, group combinations? maybe too much groups or too difficult to reach?
2. for example i group 2 nexusses in control group 4, how do i switch between them? TAB key only works if there are different building types in one group. i'd like to know that, because i sometimes need so switch to the nexus of my expansion, use chrono-boost there, switch to my main nexus, etc. or if i want to produce drones in my expansion nexus and not in my main. or do i have to press 4 and then manually doubleclick on the right nexus? i hope you get what im trying to say =).
3. when the game progressed and it's more about producing units and attacking i'd like to know how you manage your warpgates. if i'm focused on attacking, it costs a lot of time to press the button which is bound to my producing buildings, click tab to switch on my warpgate THEN find some place with an active pylon, create units, and put them in my unit group. in this time, my army attacking the enemy isn't under control. is there a more convient way of controlling my warpgates?
4. attacking. what's the best way to attack. having all units in one control group and then simply rightclicking enemy units? or using the shift command and pressing "A" instead of rightclicking? what are the advantages, how do the pros attack?
5. chrono boost. in the early stage of the game it's easy, but later on it's hard to use every cooldown, what's the best trick to use it effectively and most of the time? if i got an expansion and have 2 nexusses in control group 4, how to switch between them and use chrono boost? and when i switched to the nexus, do i have to scroll to my base (maybe an easier way of doing that?) and then click on the building i want to have boosted? i heard something about clicking on the portraits of the buildings, but then i'll need to put my nexus in the producing building group, is this right?
ok, that's all for now, would be awesome if someone answers all of my questions
If you use the unload command on a dropship (not targeting ground), you can still use the move command and the dropship will continue dropping units while you can juke around. Patrol command after issuing a drop command works as well.
On March 09 2010 03:34 toemn wrote: i've got some protoss and UI related questions, hope somebody can clear things up for me.
1. usually i group my nexussess (?) in the 4th control group, all producing buildings in the 5th (warpgates, robotics etc.) and units in 1-3. first of all, what could i improve? are there easier, more common, group combinations? maybe too much groups or too difficult to reach?
2. for example i group 2 nexusses in control group 4, how do i switch between them? TAB key only works if there are different building types in one group. i'd like to know that, because i sometimes need so switch to the nexus of my expansion, use chrono-boost there, switch to my main nexus, etc. or if i want to produce drones in my expansion nexus and not in my main. or do i have to press 4 and then manually doubleclick on the right nexus? i hope you get what im trying to say =).
3. when the game progressed and it's more about producing units and attacking i'd like to know how you manage your warpgates. if i'm focused on attacking, it costs a lot of time to press the button which is bound to my producing buildings, click tab to switch on my warpgate THEN find some place with an active pylon, create units, and put them in my unit group. in this time, my army attacking the enemy isn't under control. is there a more convient way of controlling my warpgates?
4. attacking. what's the best way to attack. having all units in one control group and then simply rightclicking enemy units? or using the shift command and pressing "A" instead of rightclicking? what are the advantages, how do the pros attack?
5. chrono boost. in the early stage of the game it's easy, but later on it's hard to use every cooldown, what's the best trick to use it effectively and most of the time? if i got an expansion and have 2 nexusses in control group 4, how to switch between them and use chrono boost? and when i switched to the nexus, do i have to scroll to my base (maybe an easier way of doing that?) and then click on the building i want to have boosted? i heard something about clicking on the portraits of the buildings, but then i'll need to put my nexus in the producing building group, is this right?
ok, that's all for now, would be awesome if someone answers all of my questions
1. This is fine
2. Try backspace, it automatically cycles through all Nexi
3. Warpgates are all automatically put into hotkey W, just hit W and warp in wherever your screen is.
4. Don't rightclick to attack unless you are focus firing, your army will ignore all enemies to attack the one you rightclicked, which can be bad news if it moved to the back of the opponents army or dies before your army gets there. For large attacks use A move and click behind your enemies army.
could you maybe explain this further? afaik backspace just puts me to my main nexus. also it's difficult to reach backspace on the keyboard. is there no other solution? regarding the 5th question, there has to be a more convenient way. i saw a lot of replays and it's too time intensive switching to the base and clicking on every building. however, i never say somebody putting their nexus in the producing building group Oo
On March 09 2010 03:20 BladeRunner wrote: Workers are smart when you queue buildings. For example you can select 5 SCVs and shift-build two supply depots, only two SCVs will move to build. This is more useful on zerg since you don't have to worry about queueing them back to mining - select all workers and shift build two extractors, only two (the closest two) will stop mining to build.
Instead of talking about saturation, it might be best to just make the 2 workers per patch thing more clear by saying this:
2 workers per patch operates at the same efficiency as 1 worker per patch
The meaning of this is very clear. You get the fastest possible 100% mining efficiency with two workers per patch.
As far as saturation goes, there have been only very few studies, but they both concluded that 3 per patch is the absolute maximum saturation - beyond 3 per patch, you are just wasting 50 minerals producing a worker. These studies also noted that the mining rate of 2 per patch is very close to 3 per patch, meaning that adding on extra workers after 2 per patch is gaining you very little.
Press Ctrl + Alt + F to show a tiny frame rate counter
The UI includes an idle worker count in the bottom left
When moving off units from minerals to gas, hold shift and click the hatchery/command center/nexus and then extractor/refinery/assimilator. Why? If your workers have any minerals they will lose them if they enter the gas collector. Making them goto the base building first means you might collect some of those minerals.
Protoss:
To execute mass psi storms, keep your high templars grouped and hotkeyed. Press T for storm then hold shift. Now spam left click all over to cast storm everywhere. Each left click = the next location to storm.
Note, there is a storm bug: you can't storm areas you can't see, even if they are right next to your templar (e.g. on a cliff above you.)
Warping in units can move while warping in. Z + shift + left click all over in a powered area to spam warped in zealots (S for stalkers, T for high templars, D for dark templars).
The fastest possible macro for protoss is warp gates + chrono boost to reduce cooldown. In warp gate mode all units share a common cooldown timer.
On March 09 2010 06:14 sysrpl wrote: Note, there is a storm bug: you can't storm areas you can't see, even if they are right next to your templar (e.g. on a cliff above you.)
How is this a bug? This is exactly how it works in SC1.
When moving off units from minerals to gas, hold shift and click the hatchery/command center/nexus and then extractor/refinery/assimilator. Why? If your workers have any minerals they will lose them if they enter the gas collector. Making them goto the base building first means you might collect some of those minerals.
A quicker way to do this is to send them to gas, and hit C for Return Cargo. If they currently have mins, they'll go to the nexus first and then to the gas.
While warping in units, the move command works as a rally point similar to that of any production buildings, when units finishes warping in, they'll move toward the rally.
This queen inject through minimap is only a problem if you have lesser queens and more hatcheries. Sometimes based on the distance, the queen starts to walk to the other hatchery.
A quick fix is have individual hatcheries and queens put together, that works really easy. So if you have 3 = Queen + Hatchery , then you hit 3 , press r and click on the hatchery (wireframe model) at the bottom and she injects.
That move larvae thing was really useful. Thanks !
On March 07 2010 05:13 mishimaBeef wrote: Clicking 'W' selects all your warpgates (and excludes normal gateways).
pressing W on the keyboard does this?
can someone verify?
Ummm.. yes of course is works with 'w' on the keyboard - where else is there a w?
Or have I misunderstood the question?
I think this only works when you have no unit/building selected because hitting W would then trigger its respective hotkey.
Btw: The lowest button right next to the mini map deselects what have you have selected at the moment. I am not sure if it has a hotkey too. I will check when I get home from work.
On March 07 2010 05:13 mishimaBeef wrote: Clicking 'W' selects all your warpgates (and excludes normal gateways).
pressing W on the keyboard does this?
can someone verify?
Ummm.. yes of course is works with 'w' on the keyboard - where else is there a w?
Or have I misunderstood the question?
I think this only works when you have no unit/building selected because hitting W would then trigger its respective hotkey.
Btw: The lowest button right next to the mini map deselects what have you have selected at the moment. I am not sure if it has a hotkey too. I will check when I get home from work.
I'm pretty sure it works whenever you press W, even if you have stuff selected. To my knowledge there is no Protoss hotkey besides warpgates that uses W. Correct me if I'm wrong.
ye I played a lot of protoss in BW and when I first played protoss in SC2 i tried to upgrade my weapons in the forge by pressing W [the hotkey of weapon upgrade in SC1], but it selected my warpgates
On March 21 2010 17:34 Kage wrote: This queen inject through minimap is only a problem if you have lesser queens and more hatcheries. Sometimes based on the distance, the queen starts to walk to the other hatchery.
A quick fix is have individual hatcheries and queens put together, that works really easy. So if you have 3 = Queen + Hatchery , then you hit 3 , press r and click on the hatchery (wireframe model) at the bottom and she injects.
That move larvae thing was really useful. Thanks !
When I have two hatcheries (one in my natural), sometimes I feel getting a second queen would give me too much larvae that i can't spend. So I would have 5 hotkeyed for both my hatcheries, and i'd memorize which one comes first (i think its usually expansion first, only because my main is morphed into a lair). Then I'd hotkey the queen + 2hatches as 6. I would "r" the correct frame (pertaining my main, for example), and many times i would hold shift and r the other expansion, even if my queen would have to walk there.
At first i would make mistakes, especially if i was doing it quickly. But so far i haven't had a problem with less queens and multiple hatcheries. It also helps to drop creep with an extra overlord between your bases.
BTW, I must've missed the trick, but how do you move your larvae?
For terran it's easy to have all command centers hotkeyed to the same key (7 for me). You can just select them all and MULE/comsat/boost supply and it will automatically smart cast. Producing workers also gets really easy as it automatically evens out the production. Same goes for protoss with producing and chrono boosting.
I wonder how people effectively chrono boost without having to switch view though. The only sensible thing seems to have nexus(es) grouped with production buildings and chrono boost the wireframe, this is a bit of a hassle though unfortunately. At the moment i group stargate's and robo's with my nexusses to chrono boost them. Chrono boosting warp gates rarely seems worth it anyway, so I dont bother grouping my nexus with them.
1) Occasionally when I tell my MMM army to attack-move to an enemy base I get two 'waypoint lines' a red one indicating that the marines/marauders are on attack-move to that location and a green line indicating that the medivacs are following and healing the group of MM. Other times my Medivacs just fly ahead of my army completely. I am sure that when either happens I am going from a situation where all my units are just on stop command, and that I am performing some kind of move or attack move or patrol command to the enemies base. I just can't quite work out how to force the UI to perform either action consistently. Anyone have any advice for that?
2) I know SCVs can have auto-repair toggled on, but does anyone have a complete list of what abilities in the game can be set to auto-cast in this fashion? Does the hud clearly identify any of these abilities? When I mouse-over the SCV repair ability the dialog box does not indicate that it can be set to auto-repair at all.
3) What is the best way to easily cast spells in combat? I am struggling with both forcefields and emp. If I set my whole army to attack-move then once in combat tab to my caster hold shift and rally up some emp/force fields they don't get cast until after the attack-move command is finished and the enemies are dead. I like to waypoint up 5-6 targets with my forces before casting force field some times, so I find pressing S then waypoint casting force fields removes my waypoint targeting. At the moment I can only cast effectively by either not using shift (no waypointed casts is a pain with force fields when you generally want multiple down at once) or by selecting only my casters after my attack commands are in place. I just can't quite get the keyboard usage down to efficiently. Any advice on the correct order to press my keys?
On March 07 2010 04:23 Twe3k wrote: Terran: You can Call down Mules on to Minerals and they will auto mine.
too obvious.
Lol Took me a whole week to figure that out. B4 I was clicking like 10 times to get a mule on the patches.
If you send the mule to the absolute closest mineral patch it will be able to mine 9 full trips as opposed to going 8 and then dying with resources en route.
On March 24 2010 09:03 DeCoup wrote: 1) Occasionally when I tell my MMM army to attack-move to an enemy base I get two 'waypoint lines' a red one indicating that the marines/marauders are on attack-move to that location and a green line indicating that the medivacs are following and healing the group of MM. Other times my Medivacs just fly ahead of my army completely. I am sure that when either happens I am going from a situation where all my units are just on stop command, and that I am performing some kind of move or attack move or patrol command to the enemies base. I just can't quite work out how to force the UI to perform either action consistently. Anyone have any advice for that?
A-move (this is called "scan move" in-game for units that don't have an attack if you look) your medivacs onto a marine/marauder and they'll follow that unit and heal as you go. I'd suggest keeping medivacs in a separate hotkey from your marines/marauders also.
Not sure about the specific problem you're having though.
2) I know SCVs can have auto-repair toggled on, but does anyone have a complete list of what abilities in the game can be set to auto-cast in this fashion? Does the hud clearly identify any of these abilities? When I mouse-over the SCV repair ability the dialog box does not indicate that it can be set to auto-repair at all.
Anything that you can right-click can be set to autocast. The only things I can think of right now are SCV repair, medivac heal (default on), and zealot charge (default on). There are probably some things I'm forgetting.
On March 21 2010 14:22 CharlieMurphy wrote: ctrl+f makes you green and your opponent red on screen and minimap. Very helpful if you are sick of being blue or red every game.
I'm at work now, but as I remember, it's ALT+F and not CTRL+F. I could be mistaking but could someone verify which one it is? I'll do it when I get home in 7 hours either way.
In PvP on maps without a backdoor, it is always safe to fast expand, if you follow this bo:
9 pylon(at nat) 14 gate(at nat) 16 nexus Forge Chrono boosted zealot Add cannons as needed depending on his build, then do w/e, your two base eco is superior to his one base.
-Only game I have lost with this is vs a fast warpgate dt counter, but that was because I was stupid and didnt build an observer or a cannon in my main.
-If you zoom in for a second its easier to click attack on a worker building a barracks.
On March 24 2010 15:57 Newguy wrote: -If you zoom in for a second its easier to click attack on a worker building a barracks.
Reminds me of another cool thing:
If you hit, if I'm not mistaken, DEL (and another button next to it, dont remember tough) you can move the camere by 30° or sth around that as long you keep the button pushed.
That might gives you the opportunity to attack a worker while he is "hidden" behind the barracks.
When facing a Terran repairing a building (bunker/planetary fortress/supply depot) simply put a force field on the repairing side and it pushes the SCV back, also if it is done right they can't repair, allowing you to quickly focus fire if applicable.
When getting bunker rushed, one forcefield is not enough to prevent units from entering the bunker. however 3 is (making a triangle)
On March 07 2010 05:13 mishimaBeef wrote: Clicking 'W' selects all your warpgates (and excludes normal gateways).
pressing W on the keyboard does this?
can someone verify?
Ummm.. yes of course is works with 'w' on the keyboard - where else is there a w?
Or have I misunderstood the question?
I think this only works when you have no unit/building selected because hitting W would then trigger its respective hotkey.
Btw: The lowest button right next to the mini map deselects what have you have selected at the moment. I am not sure if it has a hotkey too. I will check when I get home from work.
I'm pretty sure it works whenever you press W, even if you have stuff selected. To my knowledge there is no Protoss hotkey besides warpgates that uses W. Correct me if I'm wrong.
yeah i wish but in the german version of the game the hotkeys are like qwer asdf yxcv
which is kinda cool ( i really like it) but someone overlooked the W for warpgates so i cant use W because this could end up in producing a unit are causing my units to stop which really is not an option xD it really works only if nothing is selected at all.
On March 09 2010 03:20 BladeRunner wrote: I think you should be a little more explicit about the advantages of the intelligent queue. Here's two examples I've seen hinted at in the thread but not explicitly stated: [...]
Grouping queens with hatcheries is extremely powerful, in fact if you get to the point where you have 1 queen per hatchery it's necessary IMO. You hit the ctrl group (4 for me) and hit R, then hold shift and click in rapid succession on each of the hatcheries icons in the selection display. The queens are intelligent enough to knwo who should cast inject larva on each, so now all your hatcheries are instantly injected and you didn't have to move your view.
Sorry didn't read the whole thread but it's better to not use the shift. Better hit R for each hatch because otherwise the hatch may have 2 queens if one of them doesn't have enough energy for larvaes (happen more often than you think).
On March 09 2010 00:54 Piousflea wrote: Wow I am a noob, thanks to SC1 I never even thought of hotkeying a unit and a building together.
Being able to put queen + hatch together will make Zerg macro 100x easier.
Yeah that should help a bunch but I'm still fumbling a bit with this so just to make sure.
Whenever I hotkey a bunch of hatcheries together with one or more queens it seems like it's always the queen that responds to the hotkey. So they only way to actualle make drones and units is to first hit TAB to highlight the hatcheries and then TAB again to be able to inject larvae on the wireframe. Is this right?
Why would you hit tab again ? Just type the hotkey then R then the selected hatch(es) icon(s). If you want to make units just type the hotkey then tab then SH for example to make hydras. Hitting tab again would just get back to where you were exactly like typing the hotkey.
However i love to have 2 hotkeys : one for all the hatches and their respectives queen (and only them otherwise it's just troubles), and the other for all the hatches (don't select the queens) in order to macro. I have another hotkey aswell for the new expansion so that i can be sure to make drones from this hatch only.
Here are some additional tips on Rally Points (not to be confused with a units Move command).
Rally Points can be used to instruct newly created units to automatically move to specific locations, gather minerals or gas, follow other units, load into transports, and attack enemy units, buildings or destructible objects. Rally Points can be set to the ground, units, buildings, minerals and destructible objects. Multiple Rally Points (up to 4) can be queued up. Zerg have a separate Rally Point on Hatcheries called Worker Rally Point. Hot keys are Y for Rally Point W for Worker Rally Point (Zerg Hatchery). Right mouse click will also work for setting Rally Points (Example, select a Barracks, then right mouse click on the ground to set the Rally Point to that location).
Gather (set to a mineral patch or gas harvesting building(Refinery, Assimilator, Extractor)) Set the Rally Point on a mineral patch to instruct newly created workers to automatically mine a mineral patch. Set Rally Point to a gas harvesting building to instruct newly created workers to automatically collect gas. Note that Zerg Hatcheries have 2 rally points, one for units and one of workers called Worker Rally Point.
Move (set to ground) Set Rally Points to the ground to instruct newly created units to move to specific locations. Multiple Rally Points can be set to create way points instructing units to follow a specific path to their final location.
Follow (set to unit) Set Rally Points to other units in order to instruct newly created units to follow those units. This works great for harassment groups like Hellions. Example: Build a Hellion, when it is done building, set the Factory Rally Point on the Hellion, then send it out to harass, queue up more Hellions and when they are done building, they will automatically move out to join the other Hellion with the Rally Point set on it. One warning about using this method. If the unit that has the Rally Point set on it dies, the Rally Point will be set to the location where that unit died and newly created units will continue to move to that location. Sometimes this will be OK, but other times the units will end up getting killed by going to a bad location. In order to minimize this, set the Rally Point to multiple units (up to 4), so that if one dies, the new units will go to one of the other units that has a Rally Point set on it.
Load (set to transport units, Nydus Worms or units to be loaded) Rally Points can be used to instruct newly created units to automatically load into transports (including Nydus Worms) and instruct newly created transports to load units . Example: set the Factory Rally Point on a Medivac, queue up a Siege Tanks and when the Siege Tank is done building it will automatically load into the Medivac. It is also possible to set Rally Points on multiple Medivacs so that newly created units will continue to load up in the additional Medivacs until all Medivacs are full. Another Example: set the Starports Rally Point on a Marauder, build a Medivac and when the Medivac is doing building, it will automatically load the Marauder. It is also possible queue Rally Points on up to 4 units and when the Medivac is done building, it will load all 4 units. Note that once a transport is fully loaded, newly created units will follow the transport instead of loading.
Attack (set to enemy units or destructible objects) Set Rally Points to one or more enemy units, buildings or destructible objects to instruct newly created units to automatically attack those units, buildings or objects.
Note on Zerg. Each egg has its own Rally Points making it is possible to set up different Rally Points for each egg. For example, spawn 2 Overloads, then set different Rally Points for each egg. This works great for setting up Overload scouting and other things.
On April 07 2010 14:05 Arcalious wrote: Here is some additional tips on Rally Points.
Rally Points can be used to instruct newly created units to automatically move to specific locations, gather minerals or gas, follow other units, load into transports, and attack enemy units, buildings or destructible objects. Rally Points can be set to the ground, units, buildings, minerals and destructible objects. Multiple Rally Points (up to 4) can be queued up.
Gather (set to a mineral patch or gas harvesting building(Refinery, Assimilator, Extractor)) Set Worker Rally Point to a mineral patch to instruct newly constructed workers to automatically mine a mineral patch. Set Worker Rally Point to a Gas Harvesting Building to instruct newly constructed workers to automatically collect gas at the specific Gas Harvesting Building.
Move (set to ground) Set Rally Points to the ground to instruct newly constructed units to move to specific locations. Multiple Rally Points can be set to create way points instructing units to follow a path to their final location.
Follow (set to unit) Set Rally Points to other units in order to instruct newly created units to follow those units. This works great for harassment groups like Hellions. Build a Hellion, when it is done building, set the Factory Rally Point on the Hellion, then send it out to harass, queue up more hellions and when they are done building, they will automatically move out to join the other Hellion with the Rally Point set on it. One warning about using this method. If the unit that has the Rally Point set on it dies, the Rally Point will be set to where that unit died and newly created units will continue to go to that location. Sometimes this will be OK, but other times the units will end up getting killed by going to that location. In order to minimize this, set the Rally Point to multiple units (up to 4), so that if one dies, the new units will go to one of the other units with the Rally Point set to it.
Load (set to transport units) Rally Points can be used to instruct newly constructed units to automatically load into transports. This works two differnt ways. One way is to set a unit contructing buildings Rally Point on a transport unit to instruct newly constructed units to automatically load into the transport. Example, set the Factory Rally Point on a Medivac, queue up a Siege Tanks and when the Siege Tank is done building it will load into the Medivac automatically. Another way is to set the Rally Point on a transport constructing building to a unit and when the transport is done building, it will automatically load that unit. It is also possible to queue up multiple transport and units. For example, set the Rally Point using smart queueing on multiple transports and new constructed units will load into the multiple transports until they are full. Note that once a transport is fully loaded, newly cronstructed units will follow the transport instead of loading.
Attack Set Rally Points to one or more enemy units, buildings or destructable objects to instruct newly contructed units to automatically attack those units, buildings or objects.
I can't believe I didn't know that you could rally to multiple units at once. That's so huge.
On March 24 2010 15:57 Newguy wrote: In PvP on maps without a backdoor, it is always safe to fast expand, if you follow this bo:
9 pylon(at nat) 14 gate(at nat) 16 nexus Forge Chrono boosted zealot Add cannons as needed depending on his build, then do w/e, your two base eco is superior to his one base.
-Only game I have lost with this is vs a fast warpgate dt counter, but that was because I was stupid and didnt build an observer or a cannon in my main.
-If you zoom in for a second its easier to click attack on a worker building a barracks.
This build gets fucked so hard by so many openings...don't think it counts as a ' trick '.
On March 21 2010 14:22 CharlieMurphy wrote: ctrl+f makes you green and your opponent red on screen and minimap. Very helpful if you are sick of being blue or red every game.
I'm at work now, but as I remember, it's ALT+F and not CTRL+F. I could be mistaking but could someone verify which one it is? I'll do it when I get home in 7 hours either way.
So, I forgot about posting it but I was correct. Alt+F changes the player colors just like shift+tab did in sc1.
Oh, and that rally-blink move is great. I'm gonna try it soon. Stalkers are now toss's semi-reapers
I did read everyone but i maybe missed some. But with the warp gates if you are just gonna mass the same kind of unit you can hold shift and just spamm click them out the map without have to press for exampel D for every dark templars. just press D then hold down Shift and click them out.
I do this and thinks its a small difference at least ^^
and yes with the "W" hotkey as some already mentioned, its a really fast way to do this. W then D then hold shift and mass click. doesnt make that big different if you got 2 warpgates but if you have 12 warpgates to mass warp zealots or whatever i think the Shift is really usefull!
Some1 maybe already mention this sry for missed it.
I was gonna mentioned the "Blink-rally" tip as "GoDanny" just showed a clip on. because that is really nice! have tried it and its awesome. only 1 in a group of 20 stalker have failed for me so far so its really good.
On March 07 2010 04:11 azndsh wrote: [*] Pressing 'W' selects all your warpgates (and excludes normal gateways).
[/list]
gotta be careful with that one. i for example play with german hotkeys and those are doxstar keys. qwer asdf yxcv (y <=> z are switched german/american)
yw for example is a pylon. i noticed when i press w a couple times it selects my warpgates. but i'm not sure how exactly. i play z^^ just noticed it in a random game. you gotta see how it works on other language's hk
The guys at SCLegacy have a UI Tips and Tricks page. There are quite a few entries, but one of them caught my attention and needs a bit clarification.
Workers are now targeted by default by enemy units, but repeatedly hitting "S" will lower their priority if you have the workers selected.
If this is true there are two possibilities: Does this mean you can lower the priority of your own workers for the attacks of your opponent OR are you able to reduce the priority of your opponents workers for your own attacks? The second one would somewhat solve the "SCV + Marine rush" problem and make your Marines shoot the opposing Marines and the first one would make your workers safer if an opponent isnt microing and uses autoattack (Obi-Wan voice: "These are not the Workers you are looking for.")
More questions:
Does it work for other units as well or just for Workers?
Is there a way to reverse it?
Does it work for all workers or just the ones selected? (I am kinda uneasy, because the second part of the sentence uses a plural and that would not make sense if it was for all of them ... which kinda suckas again, because you have to do it for every Worker all over the map.)
On March 24 2010 15:57 Newguy wrote: -If you zoom in for a second its easier to click attack on a worker building a barracks.
Reminds me of another cool thing:
If you hit, if I'm not mistaken, DEL (and another button next to it, dont remember tough) you can move the camere by 30° or sth around that as long you keep the button pushed.
That might gives you the opportunity to attack a worker while he is "hidden" behind the barracks.
if you are trying to attack an scv building a barrack, if there is no other units around (for example your first probe harassing a bit) a move close to the barracks usually does the trick, if the scv is not inside the barracks.
On March 24 2010 15:57 Newguy wrote: -If you zoom in for a second its easier to click attack on a worker building a barracks.
Reminds me of another cool thing:
If you hit, if I'm not mistaken, DEL (and another button next to it, dont remember tough) you can move the camere by 30° or sth around that as long you keep the button pushed.
That might gives you the opportunity to attack a worker while he is "hidden" behind the barracks.
if you are trying to attack an scv building a barrack, if there is no other units around (for example your first probe harassing a bit) a move close to the barracks usually does the trick, if the scv is not inside the barracks.
Just attack-move right next to the barracks. The SCV building has higher threat level than the building itself.
Load (set to transport units) Rally Points can be used to instruct newly constructed units to automatically load into transports. This works two differnt ways. One way is to set a unit contructing buildings Rally Point on a transport unit to instruct newly constructed units to automatically load into the transport. Example, set the Factory Rally Point on a Medivac, queue up a Siege Tanks and when the Siege Tank is done building it will load into the Medivac automatically. Another way is to set the Rally Point on a transport constructing building to a unit and when the transport is done building, it will automatically load that unit. It is also possible to queue up multiple transport and units. For example, set the Rally Point using smart queueing on multiple transports and new constructed units will load into the multiple transports until they are full. Note that once a transport is fully loaded, newly cronstructed units will follow the transport instead of loading. /QUOTE]
I'd also like to note that you can rally hatcheries to load into the nydus worm. Useful once you've got a good network setup or if you're pressing a nydus attack on an enemy.
On March 24 2010 15:57 Newguy wrote: -If you zoom in for a second its easier to click attack on a worker building a barracks.
Reminds me of another cool thing:
If you hit, if I'm not mistaken, DEL (and another button next to it, dont remember tough) you can move the camere by 30° or sth around that as long you keep the button pushed.
That might gives you the opportunity to attack a worker while he is "hidden" behind the barracks.
if you are trying to attack an scv building a barrack, if there is no other units around (for example your first probe harassing a bit) a move close to the barracks usually does the trick, if the scv is not inside the barracks.
Just attack-move right next to the barracks. The SCV building has higher threat level than the building itself.
On March 24 2010 15:57 Newguy wrote: -If you zoom in for a second its easier to click attack on a worker building a barracks.
Reminds me of another cool thing:
If you hit, if I'm not mistaken, DEL (and another button next to it, dont remember tough) you can move the camere by 30° or sth around that as long you keep the button pushed.
That might gives you the opportunity to attack a worker while he is "hidden" behind the barracks.
if you are trying to attack an scv building a barrack, if there is no other units around (for example your first probe harassing a bit) a move close to the barracks usually does the trick, if the scv is not inside the barracks.
Just attack-move right next to the barracks. The SCV building has higher threat level than the building itself.
And what did I write?
uh lol? you wrote move, not attack-move. They are different commands.
I was doing some testing with burrowed banelings last night to get them spread out similar to how a Brood Wars T would spread out spider mines, and I came across a neat UI feature: Burrowed units are sorted at the end of a group's selection. This is difficult to describe...
Given: The unit in the upper left of the control group is unit [0], and the bottom-right most unit is unit [N-1], where N is the number of units in the control group.
1) Select a group of unburrowed zerglings and hotkey them to a control group. 2) Click on unit [0], tell him to burrow. 3) Hit your control group hotkey 4) The burrowed unit will now be at position [N-1] in the group. 5) Repeat the process a bunch of times to individually issue burrow commands to each unit in the control group without needing to remember which unit was issued which command.
The main point behind this is: Control groups re-order themselves based on unit modifiers.
So anyway, the pro-tip of this post is that it's very quick to issue individual commands to a group of otherwise similar units, but with dissimilar properties. If you wanted to do this in BW, you'd have to click on each unit one by one. [0], [1], [2], ... [N-1] However, now you only need to click on [0] each time you select your control group, which can really speed things up.
This works with other unit modifiers in addition to burrowed. Cloaked units sort at the end of uncloaked units. I'll have to do more testing to see if other properties work in this fashion. It's quite possible that these properties have priorities over one another.
I have 2 pointers that I don't think anyone has covered yet:
1)_When using shift to set up a way point, or to have a worker build multiple buildings consecutively, you can use the shift to have the same worker auto build several different types of buildings simply by toggling the shift key between each different building. e.g. To have an SCV build 3 supply, 2 eb & 1 Armory you would command it to build the lone supply, then depress shift & command it to build then next 2 sup., then lift & depress the shift & command it to build 2 eb, lift & depress shift to then command it to build the Arm. Each command will be carried out in the order you issued the commands in. Thus, you could have the SCV build them in any order (sup, eb, arm, sup, eb, sup - whatever you choose).
2)_When you toggle Tab while controlling a group to select a certain type of unit, (say 13 Marines, 5 Maraud, 3 ghost), the specific unit type can be commanded to perform any special power (emp) without causing the entire group to respond, however, the move & attack commands will still effect the entire group
"Cloning" Workers: Just like the cloning scourge in sc1 - if you're moving a bunch of workers to a new expo: 1)grab them all 2) right click on a gas building 3) Shift-click 3 of them 4) right-click on the other gas building 5) shift-click 3 more of them 6) right click on minerals.
Now you'll have 3 workers on each gas, and the rest on minerals.
You can use a similar technique occasionally in combat - e.g. right click a target, shift-click a unit and then right click a new target to assign 1 unit to each fleeing building or overlord.
With respect to the queens and hatcheries: Have 1 hotkey for all your hatcheries for unit production, and a seperate hotkey specifically for spawn larva with one queen per hatchery. Queens regenerate exactly enough energy to continuously spawn larva on one hatchery, and you should generally have a queen per hatchery explicitly for spawning larva on that hatchery. Every time you see 4 larva on a hatchery, it's time to spawn larva on all of them again. (This made a *massive* difference for me)
The game uses proximity and energy levels as "tie-breakers", so if all your queens have enough energy, only the one that's nearby will spawn larva, but if one of your queens is too low or you don't have enough queens, there's a risk they'll go marching across the map. This means that putting all your queens and hatcheries in one control group is quicker and easier but slightly more fragile than one control group for each queen/hatchery pair. Your choice.
NOTE: This has not been updated to reflect the latest patch changes. It is no longer possible to do wire-frame casting. ctrl right click will not attack move.
I reorganized all the tips, plus added new ones. This started off as a list of not so obvious UI features, but I decided to include even the obvious ones. Still need to do a few more tweaks and add some more stuff, but here is what I have so far. NOTE: These are mainly focused on using the interface (UI) and not strategy, however there is some crossover.
Selecting Units and Buildings
Select a unit or building: Left click on a unit or building to select it.
Select multiple units or buildings of the same type: Hold down the 'Ctrl' key while left clicking on a unit or building will select all units of that type. Double clicking on a unit or building will also select all units or buildings of the same type.
Selecting units and buildings in an area: Hold down the left mouse button and create a drag box around the units/buildings in an area to select all units in that area.
Unit and Building Groups
Max number of units/buildings in a group: 255 which makes it possible to put the whole army and all buildings in one control group. Not recommended, but possible.
Adding units/buildings to a group: Hold the 'Shift' key while selecting units/building will add them to the group.
Deleting units/buildings from a group: Hold the 'Shift' key while clicking on the unit/building wireframes or the actual unit will remove the unit/building from the group.
Cloning: Useful for sending units in a group to different locations. Example, select a group, instruct the group to move to a location, remove a unit, instruct the group to another location, remove a unit and so on.
Control Groups
Assigning control groups: A group of units and or buildings can be assigned to a control group by holding down the 'Ctrl' key plus a number key from 0 to 9.
Adding units/buildings to a control group. Hold the 'Shift' key, then select the units you want to add, then click the control group key [0-9].
Deleting units/buildings from a group: Hold the 'Shift' key while clicking on the unit/building wireframes or the actual unit will remove the unit/building from the group. Then click the control group key [0-9].
Subgroups: Different unit types in a group are ordered into subgroups. Use 'Tab' to select the next subgroup. Use 'Shift'+'Tab' to select the previous subgroup. Units with abilities (Sentries) are automatically placed in the first subgroups making it easier to use their abilities.
Commanding Units
Move: Right click on the ground or on the minimap. Hotkey = M.
Way points: Hold down the 'Shift' key while instructing units to move or attack-move.
Attack: Right click on an enemy unit/destructable object. Hotkey = A.
Attack-Move: Hold the 'Ctrl' key down and right click on the ground or minimap. Hotkey = A.
Follow: Right click on the unit to follow. (note right clicking on a transport will load the unit into the transport instead of following it)
Load: Right click on a transport unit to load unit into the transport.
Stop: 'S' key to stop current action and cancel all queued commands.
Hold: 'H' key to hold position.
Patrol: 'P' key to patrol area. Hold down 'Shift' key to set patrol way points.
Rally Points can be used to instruct newly created units to automatically move to specific locations, gather minerals or gas, follow other units, load into transports, and attack enemy units, buildings or destructible objects.
Multiple Rally Points (up to 4) can be queued up.
Rally Points can be set to the ground, units, buildings, minerals and destructible objects.
Zerg have a separate Rally Point on Hatcheries called Worker Rally Point. Hot keys are Y for Rally Point and W for Worker Rally Point (Zerg Hatchery).
Right mouse click will also work for setting Rally Points (Example, select a Barracks, then right mouse click on the ground to set the Rally Point to that location).
Camera
Center on a unit: Click on the picture of a unit in the interface to center view on that unit.
Follow a unit: Click on the picture of a unit in the interface and continue to hold down the mouse button will keep the view on that unit making the camera follow it while the unit moves.
Control group: Double clicking a control group (0-9) will center the camera view on that group.
Cycle bases: Backspace will cycle through all bases(Command Center, Nexus, Hatchery).
Last Transmission: Pressing the Space Bar multiple times will cycle through a history of transmissions (unit complete, building complete, under attack...). Transmissions also display on the left side of the screen and clicking on them will go to the area corresponding to the transmission.
User specified locations: F2, F3, F4 can be used to set user specified camera locations (not implemented yet, but should be included soon).
Rotate: Use Insert and delete to rotate the camera.
Zoom: Use the mouse wheel or page up/page down to zoom camera view in and out.
Smart casting
Building: If you have multiple workers selected, you can issue multiple build commands and they'll each build one; extra workers will continue whatever they were doing.
Using Abilities: The smart casting system will instruct all units in a group to use it's ability or only the closest one to the target depending on the type of ability. Single cast for abilities like Storm, EMP, Force Field, Fungle Plague... Multi-cast for abilities like Siege, Blink, Stimpack, Cloak.
Misc
Command Queue: Shift queuing works with all commands (siege, unsiege, land, burrow, stimpack...)
Idle workers: 'F1' selects an idle worker. 'Ctrl'+'F1' selects all idle workers.
Unit HP(Status) bars: To display the unit HP bars, use the 'Alt' key or set the "Display unit status bars" to always in the gameplay options menu.
Building Grids: Turn on building grids in the options menu to make building placement easier. Especially useful when creating walls.
Change team colors: Alt + F changes team colors to you = green, allies = yellow, and opponents = red.
Display Framerate: Ctrl + Alt + F will display the framerate.
Toggle autocast: Alt' + Hotkey will toggle autocast on/off, like SCV repair(Alt R).
Mules: Calling down mules directly on minerals will allow them to auto-mine.
Auto-repair: SCVs can be set to auto-repair by hitting 'Alt'+'R'.
Medivac follow/heal: Use the Medivac A-command(Scan Move) on a Marine/Marauder to make the medivac follow the M&M army without picking them up. Up to 4 units can be queued in case some die.
Tanks unsiege, move, siege: Use the shift queue command with tanks to unsiege, move and then siege again.
Zerg
Inject Larvae: Putting Queens and Hatcheries in the same control group makes it easier to inject Larvae by clicking on the Hatchery wire frames.
Egg Rally Points: Each egg has it's own Rally Points making it is possible to set up different Rally Points for each unit when they hatch.
Protoss
Chrono boost: Have one hotkey that just contains all your buildings, then you can chrono boost with by clicking on the building's wire frames without looking at your base. Hold shift, click C, then left click the building's wire frames.
Warpgates ready: There is a Warpgate icon in the lower right screen that shows the number of Warpgates ready. Clicking on it will select the Warpgates.
Selecting Warpgates: Pressing 'W' selects all your warpgates (and excludes normal gateways).
Shift warping units: Holding the 'Shift' key will warp in additional units of the same type by just clicking on the ground. Example, type W to select Warpgates, type Z to warp in Zealot, then click on the ground at several locations. Very quick way to warp in units.
Warping unit Rally Points: You can tell units warping in to move before they're done warping in, and they'll move there as soon as they finish.
Stalker Blink: Use 'Shift' Move, Blink to have all the stalkers move to the same spot before Blinking to another spot. This keeps Stalkers from blinking too soon and not making it to the targeted Blink area. (video)
On April 07 2010 14:05 Arcalious wrote: Here are some additional tips on Rally Points (not to be confused with a units Move command).
Rally Points can be used to instruct newly created units to automatically move to specific locations, gather minerals or gas,
Best use this to rally ALL your Nexus/CC/Hatch to a new expo mineral field, so all workers made will saturate the new expo while you can produce workers during a battle.
Another good tactic is to rally all your unit producing buildings around your front line, so for example if your army is knocking on the enemy's door, just rally all your unit producing buildings there, and they will move by default closer to the battle. Remember to move them back if you need to fall back.
Stalking blinkers: Shift-move/shift-attack to a ridge/wall/block, shift+B over the obstacle, shift-move 3-4 squares away, shift-attack objective. This takes less than 2 seconds and you can penetrate any base, too bad the stalkers suck at any point in the game when you can do this.
On March 24 2010 17:18 TheBB wrote: I'd like to know how I can auto-follow a unit with the camera. Haven't been able to find this out so far.
Click the portrait to center on the units. Keep the button pressed to track it.
Last Transmission: Pressing the Space Bar multiple times will cycle through a history of unit transmissions for up to 8 transmissions. This can allow you to reach an older unit transmission that you may have missed.
In addition, I just noticed you can click on the transmission along the left side to center on that transmission if you don't want to waste time scrolling through them. Under attack and such appear in red so this can be pretty handy to get in the habit of using instead of space, since you might be delayed using space if you just completed a building or something after you get hit.
Here's one for terran that i personally found really useful when i found out about it. (i'm not sure if it has been posted yet)
when you have your ball of MMM and you want to load up your rines/rauders into the medvacs you can just select your entire army (medvacs inlcuded it doesn't matter) and shift click all your medvacs and the units will load up until 1 is full and move onto the next one you clicked on.
i hope this helps some people ^^
oh i just remembered another one
you'll probably all know about this one but maybe somebody doesn't yet (i didn't before to long ago )
say you have 5 marines hotkeyed on '1' and you have a marauder selected. if you click ctrl + 1, '1' becomes that marauder but if you click shift + 1 you add that marauder to the group so '1' becomes your 5 marines + that marauder.
Last Transmission: Pressing the Space Bar multiple times will cycle through a history of unit transmissions for up to 8 transmissions. This can allow you to reach an older unit transmission that you may have missed.
In addition, I just noticed you can click on the transmission along the left side to center on that transmission if you don't want to waste time scrolling through them. Under attack and such appear in red so this can be pretty handy to get in the habit of using instead of space, since you might be delayed using space if you just completed a building or something after you get hit.
Thanks for letting me know about that. I also think the history is more that 8 transmission? I'll update my list.
I don't know where I should be asking this, so I figure I'll ask it here. Is there any way to disable the panel of boxes at the bottom of the screen ingame (the ones that show what you have on each hotkey)? I keep on accidentally right-clicking them and they override my hotkeys. Sometimes, it seems that I might even accidentally mouse over them and they'll override the hotkeys anyways.
Merging one control group into another: Select a control group, Hold the 'Shift' key, then click the control group key [0-9] that you want to merge to.
Note that I'm not the OP and can't update the first post, so I have been updating my list on page 6. Should it be moved to a new thread?
Everything that is relevant (UI) that is not incredibly obvious (pro) and new in SC2 (SC2 forum) should be updated in the OP. If you would like to point out anything specific that I've missed, please do so.
Merging one control group into another: Select a control group, Hold the 'Shift' key, then click the control group key [0-9] that you want to merge to.
Note that I'm not the OP and can't update the first post, so I have been updating my list on page 6. Should it be moved to a new thread?
Hmm seems a little redundant right? If you're already listing that shift adds currently selected units into the specified control group, that's enough to remember right?
On April 21 2010 13:54 azndsh wrote: Everything that is relevant (UI) that is not incredibly obvious (pro) and new in SC2 (SC2 forum) should be updated in the OP. If you would like to point out anything specific that I've missed, please do so.
I'm not going to clutter the OP otherwise
Good point, I can understand that.
On April 21 2010 13:54 azndsh wrote:If you would like to point out anything specific that I've missed, please do so.
This is the only I can think of at the moment.
Protoss. Shift warping units: Holding the 'Shift' key will warp in additional units of the same type by just clicking on the ground. Example, type W to select Warpgates, type Z to warp in Zealot, then click on the ground at several locations. Very quick way to warp in units.
Merging one control group into another: Select a control group, Hold the 'Shift' key, then click the control group key [0-9] that you want to merge to.
Note that I'm not the OP and can't update the first post, so I have been updating my list on page 6. Should it be moved to a new thread?
Hmm seems a little redundant right? If you're already listing that shift adds currently selected units into the specified control group, that's enough to remember right?
Yeah, you are right. I removed it. For some reason, I thought merging one control group into another was different, but it really is not.
bunkers also have their own rally points. This is useful if you find yourself being rushed, and have to constantly dance your units in and out of bunkers.
So, what are you guys actually doing for queen micro? Since hotkeying hatchery/queen together doesn't seem to work? Do you have hatcheries in one hotkey (for general larva spawning), and queens in another, injecting larva through the minimap or do you manually put the screen on hatcheries and then inject larva by placing inject larva on the graphical hatchery?
Also, if you hotkey all the queens and use inject larva, will always the closest queen go to the hatchery you injected on (provided both have enough energy to do it)?
Also, if you hotkey all the queens and use inject larva, will always the closest queen go to the hatchery you injected on (provided both have enough energy to do it)?
Also, if you hotkey all the queens and use inject larva, will always the closest queen go to the hatchery you injected on (provided both have enough energy to do it)?
Yes. Without this you're screwed.
Haha, well, I play in top rank Silver so I'm pretty noob But I will use this from now on.. thanks. Whats a good idea for hotkeys? 4 - Queens, 5 - Hatcheries?
bump - some UI changes made tips in this thread unusable (zerg and protoss).
Protoss - you can chrono-boost your buildings using the mini-map and careful clicking on your desired building. Selected building will appear highlighted on the minimap. This should work in similar fashion for zerg.
So, what are you guys actually doing for queen micro? Since hotkeying hatchery/queen together doesn't seem to work? Do you have hatcheries in one hotkey (for general larva spawning), and queens in another, injecting larva through the minimap or do you manually put the screen on hatcheries and then inject larva by placing inject larva on the graphical hatchery?
Also, if you hotkey all the queens and use inject larva, will always the closest queen go to the hatchery you injected on (provided both have enough energy to do it)?
Merging one control group into another: Select a control group, Hold the 'Shift' key, then click the control group key [0-9] that you want to merge to.
Note that I'm not the OP and can't update the first post, so I have been updating my list on page 6. Should it be moved to a new thread?
GJ updating, but mixing in the "noob" tips with the "pro" tips makes it confusing and annoying to have to read through.
On April 19 2010 05:42 FoFo wrote: Here's one for terran that i personally found really useful when i found out about it. (i'm not sure if it has been posted yet)
when you have your ball of MMM and you want to load up your rines/rauders into the medvacs you can just select your entire army (medvacs inlcuded it doesn't matter) and shift click all your medvacs and the units will load up until 1 is full and move onto the next one you clicked on.
i hope this helps some people ^^
oh i just remembered another one
you'll probably all know about this one but maybe somebody doesn't yet (i didn't before to long ago )
say you have 5 marines hotkeyed on '1' and you have a marauder selected. if you click ctrl + 1, '1' becomes that marauder but if you click shift + 1 you add that marauder to the group so '1' becomes your 5 marines + that marauder.
Altho that is indeed very useful, it worked exactly the same in SC1.
On May 11 2010 01:16 teekesselchen wrote: Shift-Tab, honestly does anyone ever use this? :D
yeah me too, got used to it while browsing internet becaus usually I have a lot of tabs opened and since I'm lazy to click on them I just tab / Shift+Tab through them ;]
Merging one control group into another: Select a control group, Hold the 'Shift' key, then click the control group key [0-9] that you want to merge to.
Note that I'm not the OP and can't update the first post, so I have been updating my list on page 6. Should it be moved to a new thread?
I think your post is good enough for its own thread, especially if u are constantly updating it. Ask a mod about it, and you should bold stuff that some people might not know, so experienced players wouldnt have to read thru all that basic stuff to find out new tricks.
Protip: If you keep accidentally pressing your windows button or alt-tabbing out in the middle of a game, select your resolution setting to be "Windowed Fullscreen" It will be just like it was fullscreen in terms of performance and whatnot, but if you alt tab or press the windowed button nothing will happen and you can continue on your way.
I know it's nothing huge, but helpful to new players.
On March 07 2010 05:46 Striverz-G wrote: wow, how did i get top 10 platinum without knowing F1 and W = Warp Gate
so many times have i cued in units in ONE of many gates (hotkey grouped) because it wasn't transformed into a warp gate and couldn't call in extra units now it won't happen again
top10 platinum isn't that hard. i got to top10 using only MMM + SCV. No tanks, no ghosts, no thors. Plus, i suck at this game.
On May 11 2010 05:01 Fruscainte wrote: Protip: If you keep accidentally pressing your windows button or alt-tabbing out in the middle of a game, select your resolution setting to be "Windowed Fullscreen" It will be just like it was fullscreen in terms of performance and whatnot, but if you alt tab or press the windowed button nothing will happen and you can continue on your way.
I know it's nothing huge, but helpful to new players.
Alternatively, go in Options / Gameplay and disable the windows button altogether.
On May 11 2010 08:04 gibb wrote: Holding shift and pressing F1 multiple times selects all idle workers.
I guess this is the place to ask. >How can I add units to an already existing control group? >Can I save a location so when I hit space(or any other key by that matter), I get directed to my saved location instead of the location of a recent event?
On May 15 2010 08:11 Saggi wrote: I guess this is the place to ask. >How can I add units to an already existing control group? >Can I save a location so when I hit space(or any other key by that matter), I get directed to my saved location instead of the location of a recent event?
TIA
your first question is answered a couple of posts above for the 2nd question, you can save locations with "ctrl+F5-F8" so save, and simply F5-F8 to jump to those
On May 11 2010 05:01 Fruscainte wrote: Protip: If you keep accidentally pressing your windows button or alt-tabbing out in the middle of a game, select your resolution setting to be "Windowed Fullscreen" It will be just like it was fullscreen in terms of performance and whatnot, but if you alt tab or press the windowed button nothing will happen and you can continue on your way.
I know it's nothing huge, but helpful to new players.
You can just disable the windows key, or alt+tab in the ingame options.
On May 15 2010 08:11 Saggi wrote: I guess this is the place to ask. >How can I add units to an already existing control group? >Can I save a location so when I hit space(or any other key by that matter), I get directed to my saved location instead of the location of a recent event?
TIA
1. Hold shift then select your units you want in a control group then stop holding shift.
You can also select a bunch of units but if you want only one type of unit then press control and select the wire frame.
The two I just mentioned are THE most helpful things in the world and even though they have been mentioned before I just can't stress how important these things are.
It's also possible to set your waypoints on moving units and when they are produced they will follow the unit. Good for reinforcing moving armys. Especially somthing like Muta/Pheonix.
On May 10 2010 12:43 codewarrior wrote: Many Zerg units can have Unburrow set to autocast.
Notable because really, who's looking at the Unburrow tooltip these days? It's easily missed.
wait.. what? i mean... when?
I just tested this. If you have unburrow on autocast then a unit will unburrow if something comes into its attack range and start attacking it. I guess this would be pretty useful for baneling traps?
On May 15 2010 22:04 pheus wrote: If you have unburrow on autocast then a unit will unburrow if something comes into its attack range and start attacking it. I guess this would be pretty useful for baneling traps?
This is how to make the most damage while losing as few banelings as possible, compared to move, attack-move, underground detonation.
Even if they get killed while unborrowing, there is a unit nearby, and only those that can do damage will unborrow, leaving some unsettled banelings still underground... hope not many people learn to use this, I play mostly protoss
can we make Arcalius' post in page 6 its own thread? I think more people would keep updating it. Some very useful tips in there (mixed in with some obvious ones, but hey).
I got the impression that people only wanted the "Pro UI tips" and not really interested in the expanded list I created. If people are finding it useful then I'll update it and post it to a new thread.
Two small details: 1. Workers on Watchtowers do not count as idle (they will not get selected when hitting F1). 2. When a siege tank fires in siege mode, his weapon-icon shows the cooldown until the next shot (don't know what thats good for though, doesn't take that long).
wow I actually want to shoot myself. from the first beta game that I have ever played I knew what would happend if you press f1, W, or shift click or any other OBVIOUS keybinds.. I find it completely impossible to understand how anyone could not have realized this.
but lets continue in this "tricks for absolute beginners that have never played any RTS ever" style -Ctrl+click is the same as double clicking -hit any number hotkey twice and your screen is focused on where that unit stands -In broodwar, shift+F2,F3,etc hotkeys a certain location so that when you hit F2, your screen moves there. havent tried it in the beta -ping on the map by alt clicking on the location -.- please dont use alt+G, it's like taking each marine seperately and rightclicking to move the whole ball somewhere
Chrono boost: Have one hotkey that just contains all your buildings, then you can chrono boost with by clicking on the building's wire frames without looking at your base. Hold shift, click C, then left click the building's wire frames.
I thought you could only Chronoboost by clicking the actual building or on the minimap (good luck with that one...)
On March 07 2010 05:34 faction123 wrote: How does hotkeying queen/hatch together work? Don't you need to target the hatchery with inject larvae for it to work anyway, which means you'd have to look at the hatch? Or is there some way to do it via hotkeys that i'm missing?
You can target the hatchery's icon/wireframe in the unit selection area at the bottom of the screen instead of the physical hatchery itself.
This has been removed right? I used this in the beginning of the beta but after that went over to playing Protos. Now when I started playing zerg again I can't get it to work anymore
On June 10 2010 13:31 bananengurke wrote:-In broodwar, shift+F2,F3,etc hotkeys a certain location so that when you hit F2, your screen moves there. havent tried it in the beta
Chrono boost: Have one hotkey that just contains all your buildings, then you can chrono boost with by clicking on the building's wire frames without looking at your base. Hold shift, click C, then left click the building's wire frames.
I thought you could only Chronoboost by clicking the actual building or on the minimap (good luck with that one...)
I haven't had any luck with chronoboost on the minimap.
Chrono boost: Have one hotkey that just contains all your buildings, then you can chrono boost with by clicking on the building's wire frames without looking at your base. Hold shift, click C, then left click the building's wire frames.
This just doesn't work in my game. Nothings happening, when I C-Click + Leftclick on the icon in the group.
Chrono boost: Have one hotkey that just contains all your buildings, then you can chrono boost with by clicking on the building's wire frames without looking at your base. Hold shift, click C, then left click the building's wire frames.
This just doesn't work in my game. Nothings happening, when I C-Click + Leftclick on the icon in the group.
I haven't had any luck with chronoboost on the minimap.
Yeah, it's down right impossible. If you tried it consistently you'd probably be chronoboosting the wrong building half the time.
I've tried it on the minimap for expansions where the Nexus is the only thing nearby but even that doesn't work well cause it takes 3 or 4 clicks before you're actually targeting a building.
This just doesn't work in my game. Nothings happening, when I C-Click + Leftclick on the icon in the group.
Didn't think that worked, must have been patched at some point. Too bad, would have made chronoboosting a lot easier.
Something that's useful which I never new and helped me, although it might be really obvious now, you can hold down the unit shortkey in production buildings or while selecting larva. I've wasted a lot of time selecting larva and hitting d or z a couple thousand times when I could have just held it down and gotten them out faster.
On June 08 2010 04:16 Space_C0wb0y wrote: Two small details: 1. Workers on Watchtowers do not count as idle (they will not get selected when hitting F1).
To add to this, if you tell a worker to go to a tower with a 'Move' command, they won't respond to an attack, they'll just site there. I've gotten so many kills from attack-moving one of my workers into the tower, and killing the opponent's worker there before he can react.
Buildings have the same multiple segment waypoints, you can hold shift and draw the desired waypoint path, useful for hidden air tech, not spawning units into crammed building sites but still being able to route them to the desired destination.
You can keep the shortkey pressed for a building, too. Like take your probe, hit 'B' then keep 'E' pressed and you'll be able to place your Pylon as soon as you get 100 minerals.
The most useful of all : At the beginning of the game, if you hit Ctrl-F1, you'll have ALL YOUR WORKERS selected and ready to go mining. I actually bound Ctrl-F1 to one of my mouse buttons.
EPT
now it won't happen again 
and thanks
But I will use this from now on.. thanks.
