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Sorry if this has been asked before; but this is really baffling me and I suspect baffled quite a few people already.
If you read my blog before you'd know that I just started on SC2; I want to play Terran; my only previous RTS which I played extensively was Warcraft 3.
Because Warcraft 3 has customizable hotkeys, I moved everything to the left of the keyboard and use only group 1-4 (and rarely) 5. I intend to do the same thing for SC2 (go grid!). So my first question is rather or not in your opinion 5 hotkeys are sufficient? Should I bother to train myself to be able to each to the far right of the keyboard for things such as 8, 9, and 0?
Here's a second and perhaps more serious question. If I have two Factories, one with a Reactor and one with a Tech Lab, and I group the Factories together and click on building Hellion several times, what exactly will happen? Since a Factory with Tech Lab can build Siege Tanks but can only build any unit one at a time, it is a waste for it to accidentally build a Hellion from it instead. So should I hotkey my Factories differently based on the add-ons?
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5 is not sufficient for proper army control and macro, if you don't prefer the whole tabbing thing for macroing.
I use 7 in most games.
EDIT: To answer the second question, it will put first two hellions on reactor, third on tech and then repeat. Wether to use separate hotkeys for them is a matter of taste moreso than any real advantage over one and another.
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SC2 prioritises productions from buildings depending on the addons, and I think they patched it to assign them to the reactor first, but I am not 100%.
In terms of control groups, it depends. You might be able to make do with 6 or so, and you can group multiple production buildings together and tab between them, e.g. 1-3 for army, 4 for CC, 5 for barracks, 6 for factory+starport (or some combination thereof), but 6 is a realistic minimum. 5 might be pushing it a little (but doable if you are good at remembering and tabbing, e.g. rax/fact/port on one key).
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I am OK with tabbing. I think tabbing is a basic skill in Warcraft 3 :D
But Factories with different add-ons are on the same tab. This bothers me to no ends.
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You want at least 3-4 control groups for units... I'd recommend that these be roughly seperated into your main army, casters, harrass units, and then at least another for some seperate group of units in your main army, like siege tanks or whatever. A common hotkey setup is 1,2,3 for units, CC's on 4, Rax's on 5, Fact on 6, Starport on 7, and then 0 for some random unit or building.
Regarding the factory thing, just build the unit which requires the tech lab first...you should get used to it...at least I did.
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you need 3-4 hotkeys for proper army control and and 4 hotkeys for you production buildings, unless you are used to tabbing them
As for the reactors, they work quite smart, so if you press EES in any order, you will produce this. I'm sure that the EESE will queue additional hellion in the reactor factory, but i'm not sure on EESEE. But if you dont queue you are 100% fine.
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On October 23 2010 03:15 gillon wrote:
5 is not sufficient for proper army control and macro, if you don't prefer the whole tabbing thing for macroing.
I use 7 in most games.
EDIT: To answer the second question, it will put first two hellions on reactor, third on tech and then repeat. Wether to use separate hotkeys for them is a matter of taste moreso than any real advantage over one and another.
OK That's what I suspected, too. This is bad, though. I guess I should really separate them by hotkeys.
Like I mentioned before, it's really stupid that Factories with different add-ons are on the same tab.
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United Kingdom16710 Posts
You know what? If you only want to use 5 hotkeys, then just do it. It is far more important now to get the other basics sorted out than worry about how many hotkeys to use.
I had the exact same sentiments and i made it work for me. I use 1,2,3 for my army/scout and 4 for all my production buildings. All my CCs,OCs and PFs are on 5. For me, pressing 4 and cycling through my production buildings (tab) is much faster and accurate for me than using 3 seperate hotkeys and fumbling around. Later on, i started using 6 for my upgrades.
Remember, as long as it works for you, it is perfectly fine.
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For reactors/tech labs, it will fill up reactors first. If you have one reactor and one tech lab, hitting the keys to build two hellions and a tank (in that order) will build the two hellions in the reactor and the tank in the tech lab (rather than doing one hellion in the reactor, one in the tech lab, and queuing the tank, as it would do before it was patched). There's no reason to have separate hotkeys for them.
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EPT
