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optimal terran hotkeys

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
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1 2 Next All
duckhunt
Profile Joined June 2009
Canada311 Posts
March 16 2010 23:07 GMT
#1
Hey everyone, I am making this thread because I believe that with the new SC2 setup there are about 135934056930 different ways to setup your hotkeys as terran in SC2. Right now my hotkey setup is exactly like BW and this is definitely not the best way to do it. I put my CC on 2 at the start of the game and my raxes on 3 then my facs or starports depending on what I'm going on 4. As the game progresses I put all my CC's on 2 and only use 1 hotkey for units. I try to put all my Orbital Command's on 0 - 9 for quick scanning if I need it like in BW lol. If I end up going drop or any special task force units I usually put them on 2, which totally messes me up lol. I was just wondering what other T users are doing, if everyone is stuck in BW mode like me?? And maybe you guys could help me figure out a better way to do it. I was thinking maybe putting all my command centers on 1, then all macro buildings on 2, and then using 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 for units, but I think it would be really hard to get used to tabbing through the 6 possible combos of Barracks / Factory / Starport with Reactors/Tech Labs. Does anybody on here put every single macro building in the same hotkey and use tab to scroll through?

BTW I am in top 8 Platinum on US server and top 5 overall 2v2, not some random noob :D
I appreciate anybody's input or suggestions for a new hotkey setup ^^
PredY
Profile Joined September 2009
Czech Republic1731 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-03-16 23:13:55
March 16 2010 23:13 GMT
#2
that's a tough one for me as well.
i kinda use the same set up i had for bw as well but i'm still trying to figure it out
i use like marines on 1 marauders on 2 medivacs 3 (sometimes i have marines and marauders on 1 and medivacs on 2), then tanks and then ghost or raven. i usually have my macro buildings (rax or factories) on 3 4 5, later in the game 7. scan/mule on 0. i usually macro like in bw, i go to my macro facilities by double tapping 7 and macro there, definately not used to MBS and macro but i try to do that as well
http://www.twitch.tv/czelpredy
Kiante
Profile Blog Joined December 2009
Australia7069 Posts
March 16 2010 23:21 GMT
#3
i go CC's on 5, production buildings on 4, army on 1 2 3. ezpz
Writer
Floophead_III
Profile Joined September 2009
United States1832 Posts
March 16 2010 23:24 GMT
#4
On March 17 2010 08:21 Kiante wrote:
i go CC's on 5, production buildings on 4, army on 1 2 3. ezpz


I like that setup, but I really like all my army on 1, then anything I want separate on 2 and 3, such as air or casters or tanks. The exception is mech in which case I usually do hellion on a separate hotkey entirely. No reason to use 6-0 in sc2 if you're good with tabbing.
Half man, half bear, half pig.
Dark.Carnival
Profile Blog Joined November 2006
United States5095 Posts
March 16 2010 23:27 GMT
#5
1-4 units, 5-8 buildings, 9 all my orbitals but main, 0 main orbital

there is no "optimal" hotkey set up for any race, it's whatever you are comfortable with.
@QxGDarkCell ._.
mahnini
Profile Blog Joined October 2005
United States6862 Posts
March 16 2010 23:28 GMT
#6
1-4 units
5 CCs
6 production buildings
7-0 empty lol
the world's a playground. you know that when you're a kid, but somewhere along the way everyone forgets it.
RPGabe
Profile Joined January 2010
United States192 Posts
March 16 2010 23:37 GMT
#7
I prefer placing my CC's on 5. That includes Orbital Comands, CC's and Planetary Fortresses. That way I can tab through them all and quickly queue up new SCV's without having to flip between hotkeys, plus it makes it quicker to see what you have queued up currently.

This setup also helps you rally all of your CC's to build up SCVs and send them to a new expansion, if that's what you want.

This also lets you fire off Comsats and MULEs quickly because it puts all of your Orbitals in one group. In terms of priority in the list, Orbitals come first, followed by CC's and then Planetary Fortresses.

I typically place units on 1, 2 and 3 and then my unit producing buildings on 4. All of them. Barracks, Factories and Starports all together.

You just have to get used to tabbing between buildings or units in a single hotkey as Terran. I find the benefits of quickly setting rally points for all of your buildings at the same time, and being able to see everything that's being produced with one hotkey outweighs splitting up buildings into multiple hotkeys.

I sometimes put all of my starting SCVs on 6 in case I need to deal with an early game all-in. I often set my first group of SCVs to auto-repair as well, so I can quickly flip to hotkey 6 and hit S. They immediately run out and begin repairing things in my base in this case.

I haven't found going over to 7-0 to be optimal yet and instead use the tab mechanic for buildings. I find it keeps me more focused on the left side of the keyboard where all the hotkeys are anyway.

RivalryRedux
Profile Joined July 2009
United States173 Posts
March 16 2010 23:42 GMT
#8
This is what I use

1 CCs
2 Army
3 Army
4 Army
5. Barracks
6. Factories/Starports
7-0 Nothing

I feel like I should put command centers on 8/9/0 (because I'm bad and will hit the wrong button a lot!) that way I can free up another slot for my army. Also, I hope blizzard adds custom control groups in the future so I can put production buildings on shift modifiers and my army on 1-6
shabby
Profile Joined March 2010
Norway6402 Posts
March 16 2010 23:52 GMT
#9
I do:

Beginning:
1CC
2Main building SCV
3Scouting SCV
5Rax

Early/Mid:
1CC
2CC natural
3 army
4 support army (ghost, raven, vikings, whatever)
5 raxs
6 facts
7 starports

Late: If it grows lategame and I need 3 control groups (banelings, fungal, storm, EMP, Drones/Missiles etc), i use 3 army, 4 army or ghost/raven, 5 vikings, and just move my buildings up a notch.
Jaedong, Gumibear, Leenock, Byun
Vexx
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States462 Posts
March 17 2010 00:04 GMT
#10
I've been struggling in mid-late game as terran because without hotkeys, it's very hard to spend all your money and manage the fights and battles. I usually only use 2 or 3 control groups but that definitely needs to change so this is what I am forcing myself to practice:
1) Main Army
2) Units that need special attention (Tanks for siege mode, Banshees, Vikings/Medivacs to not fly too far ahead and get owned etc..)
3) Caster (raven)
4) Caster (ghost)
5) Raxes
6) Factories
7) Starports
890) Command Centers.

Some people hotkey scvs at their main during early game to be able to quickly repair or build stuff. Other players hotkey their research/upgrade buildings. All a matter of taste. I recommend developing a system that is good for you and then sticking to it every single game.
I am not nice.
icki.icki
Profile Joined March 2010
106 Posts
March 17 2010 00:06 GMT
#11
Now that I think about it, does tab cycle through groups or through units? For example, if you put 2 rax and 2 factories on '4', would tab select both rax and then both factories, or just rax rax fact fact?
duckhunt
Profile Joined June 2009
Canada311 Posts
March 17 2010 00:15 GMT
#12
On March 17 2010 09:06 icki.icki wrote:
Now that I think about it, does tab cycle through groups or through units? For example, if you put 2 rax and 2 factories on '4', would tab select both rax and then both factories, or just rax rax fact fact?

well you would press 4 and it would select all then when you press tab it goes like this raxes with techlabs then raxes with reactors then raxes with no addon then factory with techlabs then facs with reactor ^_^

i like the idea of putting all my buildings on 1 hotkey its just if i wanted to quickly make say 2 medivacs it would be kind of annoying to have to press 4 then press tab 6 times to get to the right building :S
icki.icki
Profile Joined March 2010
106 Posts
March 17 2010 00:17 GMT
#13
I dunno, if it's pretty consistent I don't think it'd be that bad, and I think it might kind of remind you to keep all your buildings producing and not queuing. I'm gonna start putting all my production buildings on "4", and then just tabbing through them. It'll be easy early game, and you could expand to a 2nd hotkey late game if it gets annoying. I'm kind of excited about this. :D
ADAM.1
Profile Joined March 2010
United States36 Posts
March 17 2010 00:25 GMT
#14
Good question. I'm use to CC at 3, so I start off with that. Later when i have about 3 CCs (or when I really need that 3rd hotkey for specific units) I switch CCs to 0. As Terran I'm use to hitting 0 for scan so it is easy for me to call mules or scan that way.

Depending on what units I have, I like to seperate infantry@1, caster/air@2, tank/hellions@3. Really depends what part of the game it is, beginning,mid,end.

plat top10 div16
Terran Lifestyle
Cyrox
Profile Joined October 2007
Sweden147 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-03-17 02:22:31
March 17 2010 02:19 GMT
#15
I'm trying to get used to 3-4 for unit prod buildings and 5-6 for CC early. Later I switch to 5 for unit buildings and 6 for CC's. 1-4 for units. Maybe I should try to push for another digit.

I believe the optimal is 1 for unit buildings, 2 for cc's and the rest free. But it's so damn hard for me to get used to that. >.<

And yes to some above post, tab is used to switch between addons/buildings. I use it and it works fine when you get used to it but sometimes I just go back to the base and macro anyway. I guess that's a bad habit if you can get used to the new MBS real good.
Markwerf
Profile Joined March 2010
Netherlands3728 Posts
March 17 2010 02:21 GMT
#16
1,2,3 for units with 1 main army (usually MnM) and 2 and 3 support units.

4 raxes, 5 factories, 6 starports , 7 command centers.

Ill give a try to put all production buildings at 4 though and all command centers at 5. Using 6-7-8-9-0 isn't too comfortable as they are slightly too far to the right, all hotkeys are already based on the left side except a few odd ones (like loading with command center) which ill change at some point.

Perhaps 4 groups for army might be better as terran tends to use quite some different units which you don't really want to group together all too much like MnM + medivac + viking + ghosts being 4 different groups. I usually just add medivacs to group 1 my MnM group though this can be slightly bad at times as the medivas are faster and tend to arrive earlier then the rest and thus be sniped off before battles sometimes. My micro/macro can only handle so many groups though.

On a sidenote is it possible to put all production buildings (fac, rax, starp) to the same key and differentiate your unit keys so you can just go 4 -> unit key for unit you want and it will automatically make that? It would be slightly annoying to tab all 4 times if you want to make a medivac when you got raxes, factory and starports at the same key.
RPGabe
Profile Joined January 2010
United States192 Posts
March 17 2010 03:36 GMT
#17
You do have to tab between the buildings to make a Medivac, but the benefit is that you can just hit that hotkey to see a full summary of what buildings are producing. I think that benefit is worth the pain of having to tab a few times to make units (rather then hotkeying each building individually)
duckhunt
Profile Joined June 2009
Canada311 Posts
March 17 2010 03:43 GMT
#18
ok thanks for help everyone im going to try putting CC on 1 and every other macro building on 2 and units 3 + for a while and see how it goes...it really does make more sense to put your units on 3 because i can put my pinky on A and ring or middle finger on 3 4 ;p this is gonna be hard i have been using same hotkeys forever lol
PaiNt)
Profile Joined June 2009
United States38 Posts
March 17 2010 04:06 GMT
#19
1:units
2:units
3:units
4:Barrax(reactor)
5:Barrarx(tech lab)
6:Factorys
7:Starports
8 and 9: whatever i want usually i use them as my scouts/spotters
0: CC's
cartoon]x
Profile Joined March 2010
United States606 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-03-17 04:13:35
March 17 2010 04:13 GMT
#20
Offtopic but I'm using autohotkey to set 7-0 to f1-f4, then assigning my queens to f1-f4 and basically making them like the hero buttons in warcraft 3. Helps a ton
It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.
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