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Dear Protoss,
I must sound presumptuous to write a 'guide' despite not being Main-Race Protoss. However I would like to open this set-up and technique up for discussion as I believe Protosses have not been using it effectively yet. Just hear me out first.
Background
+ Show Spoiler +I was experimenting with hotkey set-ups for Protoss and realized some unique characteristic of MBS (Multiple Building Select) control groups. The effect of this could be that Protoss could have the most efficient form of control grouping for pylon warp-ins, meaning absolutely no reason you would 'look away' from a battle. My theory is based originally off this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=156842¤tpage=2However, this thread only speaks about having one pylon hotkeyed. What if they kill that Proxy after you creep forward? You have to keep 'finding it' again; this may be hard if you're mentally focusing on the battle.
What if there was a way to achieve warp-ins in key locations with minimal mouse scrolling (pushing the borders of your screen to find the proxy pylon and/or inbase defensive pylons)? What if it was possible to manage your warp-ins even including your warp prisms with this exact same technique?
Featuring Pictures (In spoilers)
Assumptions
+ Show Spoiler +1. I have assumed here that using mouse scrolling is a less efficient way than re-centering the screen with control groups. The reason for this is less screen shaking, and hence less need to 'refocus on your mouse position on the map and finding the pylon.
2. I have also assumed that harassment and drops from multiple angles can be managed to a degree with a round of Warp-Ins when you're pushing out instead of just turtling until max.
3. My third and biggest assumption is that you do not need to 'follow' a warp prism on-screen to control it around the map and set it up in position.
If you do not believe these assumption to be true, please disregard any part of my guide.
These are my current findings of the MBS game mechanic
+ Show Spoiler +1. If multiple buildings in a control group are double tapped to center on them, it will go to the closest one possible. I came to this understanding from using Zerg and just double tapping the 'larva usage' control group (as opposed to the individual base control groups e.g. 5-8).
This is the primary mechanic by which this technique works at all.
2. If you have a unit and a building in the same control group and you double tap, it prioritizes the building to center on, instead of the unit. This appears to work as long as you control group the building before the unit.
Quite a few Australian players use an inject method utilizing a Queen + Hatchery together in a hotkey; most notable in the international scene is Moonglade and tgun. It is actually faster than the backspace inject method at its fastest, because you simply double tap, click V for inject, and then just click on the hatchery. The best thing about this technique is that the hatchery is centered perfectly for your inject, there's absolutely no need to reposition your screen to make it happen!
3. Pylons don't have rallies. Self-explanatory really.
4. Right mouse clicking on the unit portrait centers it to that unit.
So how does this improve your Pylon Warp-In management?
To execute you need to be able to do the following:
+ Show Spoiler +1. Knowing how to spread out Pylons well around your base to not only power, but also to Warp-In in most areas. I would consider this good Sim-City.
2. Identifying the key pylons you might want to use to Warp-In around. This is positioning.
3. Controlling a unit by moving it alongside the mini-map.
4. Using the minimap to find enemy movement and center on that area of the map.
Technique.
1. Put a control group on your Wall-Off Pylon (In this case, let's use 4)
2. Add any Proxy Pylons (All of them)
3. Add your Pylons around your base which you might warp-in around to manage drops/harrassment. (This usually becomes relevant once you start expanding)
4. Add your Warp Prism as you tech up to it in the mid-game.
5. When you want to find the closest pylon in proximity to you, double tap 4. You will automatically center on the CLOSEST pylon to where you are on the map.
Basic Technique
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/O7JEF.jpg) Example of random Protoss army with standard 3 control-group set-up. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/HJGRE.jpg) Finding your Pylon & Warp Prism Control group. NOTE: Warp prism is not centered, meaning I just selected the group without moving the screen at all. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/V8XZr.jpg) Double Tap, I get to the closest Proxy Pylon. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/R9H43.jpg) Finding a random location on map away from pylon & Army. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/B8CrN.jpg) Double Tap! Straight to the Closest Proxy Pylon. Note my back-up Proxy (Near other Xel-Naga tower) in case my first Proxy Pylon is destroyed. I will automatically center on the other pylon if I need to Warp-In and my closest proxy is destroyed. No longer do I worry about being unable to reinforce in the midst of Micro!
6. When you need to position your warp prism, also just tap 4 and direct it on the mini-map. When you need to use it to Warp-In, just tap 4, single-select the Warp Prism and use the Unit Portrait to center on it. You can then Warp-In with it like any other pylon.
Managing Warp Prisms
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/K8ez2.jpg) Manage that Warp Prism on the minimap, queue up commands if necessary. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/FcaIJ.jpg) Single Select Prism ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/JsICs.jpg) Instantly centered by clicking on the Unit portrait! ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Ha9cz.jpg) Warp in and fight as needed. And you can always go back to the other Proxy Pylons by double tapping control group 4!
Dealing with harrass
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DGGz1.jpg) Scenario: Random drops / Ling Runby scouted!! Moved to area on map to scout it. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/brE8j.jpg) Immediately managed by having your screen in perfect position!
Implications and Impact of this technique
+ Show Spoiler +* When attacking (e.g. 4 Gate) you need to constantly refuel your army. You do not need to slowly 'find' your pylon with mouse by pushing around the screen or looking at the minimap. You just double-tap the control group and find it.
* When defending a drop, you usually center on the map to see what is coming at you. From there, just double tap 4 and you are immediately placed with the CLOSEST pylon to that position on the map where the drop/harrass is coming in.
* When under the threat of Ling Runbys in PvZ, being close on the minimap to where they're coming, and double tapping to immediately bring you to the choke point makes Warp-Ining in a Zealot to block incredibly fast. You can also use the Pylon centering to get to your Sentries there (Meaning you don't need to control group armies in defense!)
* Your Warp Prism can be put in the same management group as your Warp-In Pylons, meaning you do not waste one of your primary army hotkeys to manage it individually.
Concluding thoughts:
I still have not solved usage of multiple Warp-Prisms yet with this technique. Despite this, I strongly believe using this technique will allow Protosses to seamlessly implement Warp Prisms into their play without needing to focus on re-mapping control groups or reach for weird groups not used normally.
Added:
On November 15 2011 12:07 Whiplash wrote:
Could you make a video or something to show how this is used in game?
The best I have to demonstrate is the replay I used to take screenshots of the technique. Note how minimally I used mouse scrolling ingame (only to build base pylons/robo/gateways etc), rather I relied predominantly on control groups and minimap to move across the screen in various places without trying to 'tune' my camera.
REPLAY - Against AI
Please leave thoughts.
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Interesting. So basically the idea is you hotkey the closest pylon to where you are warping in and save time. You are a little verbose to say the least, but a good idea.
Personally, I hotkey my closest proxy pylon for this very idea. However, this may also be worth doing. WP must be hotkeyed as well.
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On November 15 2011 10:57 TigerRawr wrote:
Interesting. So basically the idea is you hotkey the closest pylon to where you are warping in and save time. You are a little verbose to say the least, but a good idea.
Personally, I hotkey my closest proxy pylon for this very idea. However, this may also be worth doing. WP must be hotkeyed as well.
No, I'm saying Protoss should hotkey EVERY pylon you might ever possibly Warp-In with. This means from the moment the game starts, you have a highly organized control-group set up which is not definitely lazy, but a means of pin-point accurately getting your camera into position to deal with anything and everything.
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Doesn't the camera go to where you have the most of something?
And why can't you use Fkeys?
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Wow, that's a pretty cool idea. I think i'm going to give this a shot.
I think that someone that uses F-keys efficiently probably won't have too much use for this technique, but if you're like me and don't use them (i'm lazy =p) then this will have a very positive impact.
Thanks for the guide, looking forward to trying this :D
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This is a really cool method, very interesting results. Seems really powerful in the right hands.
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On November 15 2011 11:00 mizU wrote:
Doesn't the camera go to where you have the most of something?
And why can't you use Fkeys?
From my understanding of this in the case of buildings it centers around the closest building. In my screenshots for example three of my pylons in the control group were quite close together.
F keys are actually supposed to be the absolute best method of base management. However, in practice you don't even see NA or most Korean pros at the highest levels use F keys (This is my conclusion after watching FPViews of Idra, Losira, Boxer, Nada etc including their BW Keyboard views). I believe it has to do with the fact you need to move your hand off the neutral position used for normal 4567 BW macro.
I would like to note though that MC does use F keys for base management.
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This is actually really really cool... I am totally going to rebind my w to all for me to put a pylon in the hotkey!
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Unfortunately all my hotkeys are used up, so I won't be able to utilize this. For those who use fewer hotkeys, this would be a great tool!
I think I'm going to try use screen-capture (Fkeys) to save my proxy pylon. Have always wanted to but never really forced myself into the habit of doing so.
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I just bind one of my screen caps to Q and use that for my proxy pylon. With my Bases on F1 F2 F3, I can pretty much get anywhere I need in one action.
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I thought everyone did this.
you can also use location keys, rather than actually hotkeying a pylon.
I use a floating location key that I change from time to time depending on where is relevant to warp in the bulk of my army. I also sometimes use a second location for a second proxy for harass or what have you.
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Interesting. I usually just click on the minimap where my closest (or what I think is my closest) proxy pylon is, but I can see how that causes unnecessary thought in the middle of a battle and is slower. I'll try this out, though I usually have all of my convenient hotkeys bound. Maybe I'll remap tab or something. Is "Q" used for anything?
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To those who are using F keys (and props up to you guys for learning the game BW style), how do you manage your warp prisms? This method manages pylons AND warp prisms together at once without needing to adjust your play and control groups just for the warp prism. Everything is accounted for from the moment the game starts.
How do you manage losing your first proxy pylon as you creep forward?
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@ Moocow:
You might not want to remap Tab, since it's often used to change control group caster hotkeys (so you have sentry ff, or blink to micro with, or storms etc).
Q is used for Queens if you play multiple races; I feel like that the Q mapping only works for Protoss-only players.
Tilde Key (~) might be a good option to remap for a screen bind. Only issue I might see is if you backspace inject with Tilde
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Wow thanks, nice tip, I'm pretty sure it will be a lot useful ^^
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On November 15 2011 11:47 elliminist wrote:
To those who are using F keys (and props up to you guys for learning the game BW style), how do you manage your warp prisms? This method manages pylons AND warp prisms together at once without needing to adjust your play and control groups just for the warp prism. Everything is accounted for from the moment the game starts.
How do you manage losing your first proxy pylon as you creep forward?
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@ Moocow:
You might not want to remap Tab, since it's often used to change control group caster hotkeys (so you have sentry ff, or blink to micro with, or storms etc).
Q is used for Queens if you play multiple races; I feel like that the Q mapping only works for Protoss-only players.
Tilde Key (~) might be a good option to remap for a screen bind. Only issue I might see is if you backspace inject with Tilde
Oh, right, forgot about that use of tab. I already have tilde remapped to backspace... I guess I mostly play Protoss, so Q should be okay.
It's annoying how few keys there are in the "convenient" area of your keyboard.
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This is far from stupid, it's actually something really cool to experiment. Thanks for incepting me with this, will check it out on ladder.
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Cool idea, but not ideal. You'd have to play assuming you have correct hotkey setups. In a close game a mistake like the screen jumping to the wrong pylon unexpectedly will result in a loss. I'd much rather use my reliable minimap clicking skills, or fkeys to do the job.
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On November 15 2011 11:59 CecilSunkure wrote:
Cool idea, but not ideal. You'd have to play assuming you have correct hotkey setups. In a close game a mistake like the screen jumping to the wrong pylon unexpectedly will result in a loss. I'd much rather use my reliable minimap clicking skills, or fkeys to do the job.
If I understand correctly, the idea is that you hotkey all your pylons that you expect you might ever warp-in from, and then when you hit the hotkey, it takes your screen to the closest one. I don't really see how it could take you to the wrong pylon -- when is the closest pylon that you thought you might want to warp in from ever going to be the "wrong" pylon? I guess if it's still building that would be a problem, but as long as you're careful about that, I can't ever see it being a problem.
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Could you make a video or something to show how this is used in game?
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Cool idea. I do this with overlords already, and bind all of my overlords to 6 when I make them. That way, when I need an overseer, I can just double tap 6 to get the nearest overlord.
Binding overlords to 6 also helps for mid game overlord spread and drops.
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On November 15 2011 11:59 CecilSunkure wrote:
Cool idea, but not ideal. You'd have to play assuming you have correct hotkey setups. In a close game a mistake like the screen jumping to the wrong pylon unexpectedly will result in a loss. I'd much rather use my reliable minimap clicking skills, or fkeys to do the job.
This.
I used to rely a lot on hotkeys and fancy control groups setups. It's fine as long as the game unfolds in an orthodox way, but in crisis state, when all becomes messed up, you have units everywhere and the opponent as well, you can only rely on your mouse speed and precision.
Use the minimap, it seems less optimal, but that's how the pros do it, because it's reliable, and you have to be fast with your mouse to be good anyway.
Off topic, but just a piece of advice: train youself to be able to use different hotkey setups dynamically in the same game. For example my main setup is HuK's style (1: zealot/sentries 2: stalkers 3: colossus). But I can also switch to some kind of air harass play (1: gateway units, 2: void rays, 3: pheonix) or a late game deathball (1: gateway 2: colossus 3: templars), or even a complete harass gameplay (1: warprism 2: blink stalkers 3: pheonix) and not even hotkey your main army.
When I play terran this skill is an obvious requirement to me, you have so many different units sometimes that you could hotkey everything separately, but you don't have enough control groups, so in the end, you just have to allocate dynamically some hotkey for what seems most important at a given time, and handle the rest with your mouse. Bottom line is it's better to play with the most adaptative mechanics and not corner youself in some narrow minded tricks from the SC2 engine. That's my cool story bro-ish take on this, so don't mind me much, it's a good find nonetheless.
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Thanks for this. Look great, might try it out later 
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Interesting but sorry, not to my liking.
1. This is the main problem: I've used up all my hotkeys. Aside from 3-4 control groups for units, I also hotkey forges and observers so yea... not enough.
2. I still find mouse scrolling/minimap clicking more reliable.
3. Spacebar to jump between bases to deal with mineral line drops.
4. F keys to fix camera on different forward pylons.
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Taiwan619 Posts
I've been using F-keys. F1 main, F2 nat/wall, F3 proxy
warp prism is usually on separate hotkey, usually the one next to my army to facilitate movement control
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I think the camera keys were created in order to accomodate such a task. Generally players use control groups pretty well, but F1-F8(custom bound) are generally ignored.
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On November 15 2011 11:59 CecilSunkure wrote:
Cool idea, but not ideal. You'd have to play assuming you have correct hotkey setups. In a close game a mistake like the screen jumping to the wrong pylon unexpectedly will result in a loss. I'd much rather use my reliable minimap clicking skills, or fkeys to do the job.
Not to be offensive but don't Protoss already play on a thin line in the first place with Forcefields and unit micro? I believe it's a reasonable assumption when moving into pro level that it's inexcusable to mess up hotkey set-ups.
Minimap clicking is a minimum requirement to being able to use this technique properly in the first place; However, on maps with way larger bases (eg ICCUP Testbug) you need to end up mouse scrolling (pushing mouse against sides of screen) and this ends up meaning that your method is not 'efficient'. To a certain degree many players compensate for their flaws in interface control with pure hand speed. You see this the case with even the best macro players (e.g. Ret)
To counter your argument, then it's also totally possible to rely on pure mouse speed and minimap precision to rectify mistakes like jumping to the wrong pylon.
But to reiterate, this guide was written from the assumption that players want to utilise the most user interface efficient form of control.
One extreme example of a player relying purely on speed is Masq (Est 400 apm?). He constantly uses mouse scroll to get to all the location he needs to go. I don't think this is in any regards a 'better' or more 'efficient' form of play, despite him being able to solve all the problems and winning by mouse speed and spam.
On November 15 2011 12:07 Whiplash wrote:
Could you make a video or something to show how this is used in game?
Unfortunately not. Computer can't support FRAPS + SC2 at same time.
Though, even if I could I'm not sure I'd be an appropriate Protoss user to demonstrate it - My Protoss mechanics are a league below my Zerg and Terran.
The best I have is the replay I used to take screenshots of the technique. Note how minimally I used the mouse scrolling ingame, rather I relied predominantly on control groups and minimap to move across the screen in various places without trying to 'tune' my camera around.
REPLAY - Against AI
On November 15 2011 12:14 ZenithM wrote:I used to rely a lot on hotkeys and fancy control groups setups. It's fine as long as the game unfolds in an orthodox way, but in crisis state, when all becomes messed up, you have units everywhere and the opponent as well, you can only rely on your mouse speed and precision.
Use the minimap, it seems less optimal, but that's how the pros do it, because it's reliable, and you have to be fast with your mouse to be good anyway.
Off topic, but just a piece of advice: train youself to be able to use different hotkey setups dynamically in the same game. For example my main setup is HuK's style (1: zealot/sentries 2: stalkers 3: colossus). But I can also switch to some kind of air harass play (1: gateway units, 2: void rays, 3: pheonix) or a late game deathball (1: gateway 2: colossus 3: templars), or even a complete harass gameplay (1: warprism 2: blink stalkers 3: pheonix) and not even hotkey your main army.
I believe you don't agree with my basic assumptions about the technique. That being said yes I do also rely on mouse speed and mini-map precision to compensate for my incomplete interface control of the game. However this doesn't mean it's the best way to do things.
Minimap awareness and usage should be very important too. I probably can't stress this enough Good Protosses right now already have base pylons spread in a way that the whole area is carpeted with energy to warp in anywhere, anytime. However streamlining this, and ALSO with Warp Prisms in a shared dedicated hotkey, is the objective of considering this technique useful at all.
Not hotkeying army is possible, but I don't see why it should be considered 'optimal' play. From what I see of your control groups, you constantly remap warp prisms only when you use them. What if you had them ready for your unit composition from the start. Even if you don't get a single warp prism, the control group is still being dedicated to something useful from the start.
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Hmmm this is pretty interesting to say the least. I don't know if it's worth the effort in regards to dealing with harass (since you need to click on the minimap regardless) or pylons grouped with your units (since that would take away your ability to double tap to center on that group of units so you would have to click the portrait instead).
I do wish they added some sort of functionality to center your screen on different units in your control group though. When I am doing a multi-prism harass it would be nice if I could say double tap a control group with 2 warp prisms and center on the first prism, then double tap again to center on the 2nd.
Oh and here is an interesting somewhat-related topic to this regarding location capture keys. For places you know will stay the same throughout the game (i.e bases, ramps, etc.) you can use the tradition ctrl or shift+f-key, but have one location capture for places you know will be changing (proxy pylons, harass locations) and set it as a normal f-key w/ no modifiers, then set an easily accessible key to jump to that point (I use spacebar). So for instance when I'm harassing with my warp prism, I can harass, hit F4 to save that location, then F1 to go back to my base to macro, then spacebar to go back to harassing. It is makes jumping screens via capture keys a lot smoother and easier on the hands.
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On November 15 2011 12:44 elliminist wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2011 11:59 CecilSunkure wrote:
Cool idea, but not ideal. You'd have to play assuming you have correct hotkey setups. In a close game a mistake like the screen jumping to the wrong pylon unexpectedly will result in a loss. I'd much rather use my reliable minimap clicking skills, or fkeys to do the job. Not to be offensive but don't Protoss already play on a thin line in the first place with Forcefields and unit micro? I believe it's a reasonable assumption when moving into pro level that it's inexcusable to mess up hotkey set-ups. To counter your argument, then it's also totally possible to rely on pure mouse speed and minimap precision to rectify mistakes like jumping to the wrong pylon.
It's really easy to mess up hotkeying multiple pylons when you are relying on jumping to the correct one at any given time. In order for it to be better to map multiple buildings to a single hotkey it would have to be reliably faster than just using fkeys or minimap clicking. However since you can't really reliably guage which pylon you'll jump to, since you can't accurately always guess which pylon is closest, it's faster to have higher reliability of absolute positions.
It's also not really realistic to quickly "fix a mistake" if you jump to the wrong pylon, since if it were you wouldn't jump to the wrong pylon in the first place; in order to "fix the mistake" you need to be able to accurately guage the closest pylon.
Any good player would rather fkey fixed hotspots and jump them on demand, than to mess with a highly dynamic system requiring a lot of guessing in order to work well.
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On November 15 2011 12:04 moocow2009 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2011 11:59 CecilSunkure wrote:
Cool idea, but not ideal. You'd have to play assuming you have correct hotkey setups. In a close game a mistake like the screen jumping to the wrong pylon unexpectedly will result in a loss. I'd much rather use my reliable minimap clicking skills, or fkeys to do the job. If I understand correctly, the idea is that you hotkey all your pylons that you expect you might ever warp-in from, and then when you hit the hotkey, it takes your screen to the closest one. I don't really see how it could take you to the wrong pylon -- when is the closest pylon that you thought you might want to warp in from ever going to be the "wrong" pylon? I guess if it's still building that would be a problem, but as long as you're careful about that, I can't ever see it being a problem.
If you are getting harassed or dropped in a location away from your army
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On November 15 2011 12:55 NerZhuL wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2011 12:04 moocow2009 wrote:On November 15 2011 11:59 CecilSunkure wrote:
Cool idea, but not ideal. You'd have to play assuming you have correct hotkey setups. In a close game a mistake like the screen jumping to the wrong pylon unexpectedly will result in a loss. I'd much rather use my reliable minimap clicking skills, or fkeys to do the job. If I understand correctly, the idea is that you hotkey all your pylons that you expect you might ever warp-in from, and then when you hit the hotkey, it takes your screen to the closest one. I don't really see how it could take you to the wrong pylon -- when is the closest pylon that you thought you might want to warp in from ever going to be the "wrong" pylon? I guess if it's still building that would be a problem, but as long as you're careful about that, I can't ever see it being a problem. If you are getting harassed or dropped in a location away from your army
Then that's when you use the minimap. Just because you're using a given technique doesn't mean you can't also use a different one if you have to.
I guess I'll have to try it out a little and see if it really helps.
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On November 15 2011 12:52 CecilSunkure wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2011 12:44 elliminist wrote:On November 15 2011 11:59 CecilSunkure wrote:
Cool idea, but not ideal. You'd have to play assuming you have correct hotkey setups. In a close game a mistake like the screen jumping to the wrong pylon unexpectedly will result in a loss. I'd much rather use my reliable minimap clicking skills, or fkeys to do the job. Not to be offensive but don't Protoss already play on a thin line in the first place with Forcefields and unit micro? I believe it's a reasonable assumption when moving into pro level that it's inexcusable to mess up hotkey set-ups. To counter your argument, then it's also totally possible to rely on pure mouse speed and minimap precision to rectify mistakes like jumping to the wrong pylon. It's really easy to mess up hotkeying multiple pylons when you are relying on jumping to the correct one at any given time. In order for it to be better to map multiple buildings to a single hotkey it would have to be reliably faster than just using fkeys or minimap clicking. However since you can't really reliably guage which pylon you'll jump to, since you can't accurately always guess which pylon is closest, it's faster to have higher reliability of absolute positions. It's also not really realistic to quickly "fix a mistake" if you jump to the wrong pylon, since if it were you wouldn't jump to the wrong pylon in the first place; in order to "fix the mistake" you need to be able to accurately guage the closest pylon. Any good player would rather fkey fixed hotspots and jump them on demand, than to mess with a highly dynamic system requiring a lot of guessing in order to work well.
I quite agree with F-keys as a better on demand method harrass management. However I usually set those at bases so I can macro inbase; I don't usually have them captured to main choke points either.
There isn't really guesswork if you have picked out a correct number of pylons. I considered hotkeying every single pylon - that's where the constant errors you suggest actually happened in practise. However if u map say 2 pylons per base (3 over 2 bases depending?) and all proxies and warp prism, then this shouldn't really happen.
Following along the argument it is never a correct decision to rely on control grouping to center on your bases, are you suggesting this technique is suboptimal for say 3 proxy pylons and a Warp Prism in an aggressive stance? You want to always be able to tab to the closest proxy to your army no matter where it is. If they snipe the closest proxy, you would want to find the next closest proxy. I feel it's more time consuming to remap a new screen capture if your closer proxy is destroyed and you still need to focus on the combat.
The warp prism in the midgame should always able to be positioned correctly through this as well - you don't 'rally' pylons so there should be no forced positioning error by having it on the same hotkey.
I would love to hear your opinion on those aspects of this Technique.
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One more thing as to why I don't think this is really suitable. If we shift queue the probe to build a forward pylon somewhere or any pylons at the edge of the base, I certainly would not want to wait for it to be thrown down before hotkey-ing it. And I certainly do not wish to have to go back to it to hotkey it a few seconds later either. I rather just fix the camera at the same time I order my probe to build a pylon at X location.
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On November 15 2011 13:07 elliminist wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2011 12:52 CecilSunkure wrote:On November 15 2011 12:44 elliminist wrote:On November 15 2011 11:59 CecilSunkure wrote:
Cool idea, but not ideal. You'd have to play assuming you have correct hotkey setups. In a close game a mistake like the screen jumping to the wrong pylon unexpectedly will result in a loss. I'd much rather use my reliable minimap clicking skills, or fkeys to do the job. Not to be offensive but don't Protoss already play on a thin line in the first place with Forcefields and unit micro? I believe it's a reasonable assumption when moving into pro level that it's inexcusable to mess up hotkey set-ups. To counter your argument, then it's also totally possible to rely on pure mouse speed and minimap precision to rectify mistakes like jumping to the wrong pylon. It's really easy to mess up hotkeying multiple pylons when you are relying on jumping to the correct one at any given time. In order for it to be better to map multiple buildings to a single hotkey it would have to be reliably faster than just using fkeys or minimap clicking. However since you can't really reliably guage which pylon you'll jump to, since you can't accurately always guess which pylon is closest, it's faster to have higher reliability of absolute positions. It's also not really realistic to quickly "fix a mistake" if you jump to the wrong pylon, since if it were you wouldn't jump to the wrong pylon in the first place; in order to "fix the mistake" you need to be able to accurately guage the closest pylon. Any good player would rather fkey fixed hotspots and jump them on demand, than to mess with a highly dynamic system requiring a lot of guessing in order to work well. I quite agree with F-keys as a better on demand method harrass management. However I usually set those at bases so I can macro inbase; I don't usually have them captured to main choke points either. There isn't really guesswork if you have picked out a correct number of pylons. I considered hotkeying every single pylon - that's where the constant errors you suggest actually happened in practise. However if u map say 2 pylons per base (3 over 2 bases depending?) and all proxies and warp prism, then this shouldn't really happen. Following along the argument it is never a correct decision to rely on control grouping to center on your bases, are you suggesting this technique is suboptimal for say 3 proxy pylons and a Warp Prism in an aggressive stance? You want to always be able to tab to the closest proxy to your army no matter where it is. If they snipe the closest proxy, you would want to find the next closest proxy. I feel it's more time consuming to remap a new screen capture if your closer proxy is destroyed and you still need to focus on the combat. The warp prism in the midgame should always able to be positioned correctly through this as well - you don't 'rally' pylons so there should be no forced positioning error by having it on the same hotkey. I would love to hear your opinion on those aspects of this Technique.
If your goal is to simply warp in at the closest point to your current screen location, then mapping pylons would be excellent assuming you think ahead in terms of where your units will actually have to path to get from warpin to your screen location.
However if you need to jump to the closest position to a point other than your current screen position, it's always better due to reliability to have fixed points to jump to. Even if you pick a small number of pylons smartly, it's still going to be more reliable to just map to individual bases or hotspots.
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On November 15 2011 13:31 Xenorawks wrote:
One more thing as to why I don't think this is really suitable. If we shift queue the probe to build a forward pylon somewhere or any pylons at the edge of the base, I certainly would not want to wait for it to be thrown down before hotkey-ing it. And I certainly do not wish to have to go back to it to hotkey it a few seconds later either. I rather just fix the camera at the same time I order my probe to build a pylon at X location.
I personally wouldn't pick those pylons to be control-grouped. I would pick ones more deeper inside since you need to have units complete, not warping in and vulnerable. Positionally inside base to outside base is better than from the outskirts of a base trying to chase inwards.
That being said I have the benefit of playing Zerg so I face this hotkeying issue with drones becoming hatcheries every game. I've just gotten used to it. Not sure why this is too difficult.
That being said you believe mouse scrolling is a better method. My assumptions consider mouse scrolling as a suboptimal method of control.
Trust me, after you get from bronze to diamond on a terrible laptop which runs sc2 at 14 fps on a good day, you aren't going to be relying on mouse scrolling anytime into the future. That's just my personal hardware background and the main reason I am an anti-fan of mouse scrolling.
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I've rehotkeyed one of the F keys to ` and use that for my rally points. when i offrace protoss i use that for main warp in pylon
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On November 15 2011 13:47 elliminist wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2011 13:31 Xenorawks wrote:
One more thing as to why I don't think this is really suitable. If we shift queue the probe to build a forward pylon somewhere or any pylons at the edge of the base, I certainly would not want to wait for it to be thrown down before hotkey-ing it. And I certainly do not wish to have to go back to it to hotkey it a few seconds later either. I rather just fix the camera at the same time I order my probe to build a pylon at X location. I personally wouldn't pick those pylons to be control-grouped. I would pick ones more deeper inside since you need to have units complete, not warping in and vulnerable. Positionally inside base to outside base is better than from the outskirts of a base trying to chase inwards. That being said I have the benefit of playing Zerg so I face this hotkeying issue with drones becoming hatcheries every game. I've just gotten used to it. Not sure why this is too difficult. That being said you believe mouse scrolling is a better method. My assumptions consider mouse scrolling as a suboptimal method of control. Trust me, after you get from bronze to diamond on a terrible laptop which runs sc2 at 14 fps on a good day, you aren't going to be relying on mouse scrolling anytime into the future. That's just my personal hardware background and the main reason I am an anti-fan of mouse scrolling.
You're talking from a defender's point of view. How about reinforcing your troops? You did mention about jumping to the closest pylon to warp in units for reinforcements in your main post didn't you?
I'll give you a very simple and plain example.
A PvP 4gate vs 4gate on TDA.
I intercepted and defended a 4gate, now I have more units, I want to go deal the killing blow.
I order my units to move close to my opponent's base. In the meantime I select a probe to build a proxy pylon somewhere closer to my opponent's base. Without waiting for the probe to move there and complete the pylon, I would already be sending my units to my opponent's base and micro battle would have started already.
The 2 cases:
1. If I were to use your method, I would probably have to mouse scroll to that forward pylon and hotkey it in the heat of the battle because I couldn't hotkey it earlier if it wasn't being built yet, and then start warping in units as reinforcements. A slightly faster way without mouse scroll would be to control group the building probe beforehand and double tap to it after the pylon is built, and then hotkey it, and then reinforce.
2. If I were to use the camera method, my units will be moving out while I select the probe to build a pylon at a specific location. At the same time I order it to be built, I set camera on that same location. So during the micro battle halfway I would be able to use the F keys and reinforcement immediately.
This is the scenario where you have to attack before the pylon has even started building(your probe still travelling) and warp in immediately as the pylon is finished
Hope you get my point here, the advantage of the camera is you can set it before the pylons are built, instead of having to wait for it to be thrown down because you simply can't wait for it while you are counterattacking or doing 2-3 prompt attacks etc.
I'm no fan of mouse scrolling either, but if you do set your mouse scroll speed to a very high %, you can actually scroll pretty damn quickly(even faster than minimap clicking).
You say it's better to warp stuff from the inside of your base and move to the edges and defend a drop because warping it at the edge in sight of your enemy is very vulnerable. Then what's the difference if I use spacebar to go to my nexus and warp stuff around it OR tap my camera to a fixed location OR double tap forges/robo if placed near the drop location OR simply mouse scroll/minimap click to any pylon location close to it and do that? It doesn't make sense to bother to go to the closest pylon in that case since all you want is to warp the units somewhere in your base as long as it is close to the drop but not close enough for your opponent to snipe them.
I don't find your method difficult, I just find it a little unnecessary to use an extra hotkey just to defend drops slightly better. Mouse scrolling is a suboptimal method of control yes, but being unable to hotkey a forward pylon before it's built now that is unreliable when you're going to be attacking at a very fast pace. Mouse scrolling doesn't beat double tapping control groups that is for sure, but a mixture of double tapping and fixing camera location beats them all.
Your main's not protoss, maybe you don't play it at such a high pace. You are suggesting this method assuming that a protoss always has all his pylons in place before attacking but you have not taken into consideration:
1. You don't have pylons if you're just moving out early. Simply throwing proxy pylons everywhere early game is one thing, getting them destroyed is another.
2. Counterattacks, you don't always expect to have a happy pylon for warpins. You have to bring a probe along all the time. And more often than not, you have to attack before your pylon is in place.
3. 2-3 prompt attacks. I select 2 probes one to build at X location one to build at Y location and select my warpprism to land at Z location and then I move out my army to engage/my opponent army intercepts me. So in this case, how am I going to hotkey my X and Y pylon? I would already have my warpprism on a control group so it is unnecessary to even bring up Z location. Not to mention, I have to be controlling my army at the same time, I ain't gonna move my screen magically to X and Y location to warp stuff in there, but I certainly would use F keys for that.
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On November 15 2011 13:43 CecilSunkure wrote:
If your goal is to simply warp in at the closest point to your current screen location, then mapping pylons would be excellent assuming you think ahead in terms of where your units will actually have to path to get from warpin to your screen location.
However if you need to jump to the closest position to a point other than your current screen position, it's always better due to reliability to have fixed points to jump to. Even if you pick a small number of pylons smartly, it's still going to be more reliable to just map to individual bases or hotspots.
I would think this reliability is a pretty important factor, since it's kind of the whole point of having a consistent hotkey setup every game. I really like this idea and will probably use it because it's clever, but I'm not sure it's actually any better than just keeping one (or two) pylon(s) on a spare hotkey (or two). Sure, this way you'll always be warping in units at the closest location to your current screen, but (1) that assumes your current screen is always where you want to send your units, and (2) you still have to rally the units anyway -- with a whole group of warp-in pylons, you're going to have to spend half a second reorienting yourself on the minimap and rallying your newly made units in the right direction, but with a dedicated warp-in pylon you don't have to think about it; you know where you just jumped to and where you came from.
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On November 15 2011 11:07 elliminist wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2011 11:00 mizU wrote:
Doesn't the camera go to where you have the most of something?
And why can't you use Fkeys? From my understanding of this in the case of buildings it centers around the closest building. In my screenshots for example three of my pylons in the control group were quite close together. F keys are actually supposed to be the absolute best method of base management. However, in practice you don't even see NA or most Korean pros at the highest levels use F keys (This is my conclusion after watching FPViews of Idra, Losira, Boxer, Nada etc including their BW Keyboard views). I believe it has to do with the fact you need to move your hand off the neutral position used for normal 4567 BW macro. I would like to note though that MC does use F keys for base management.
Zerg and Terran hardly need to use location hotkeys. If you have your hatches hotkeyed or you use a backspace inject method you don't even really need to look at your base much. While terran really only looks at his base to build supply depots and buildings.
Protoss however has the most flexibility on locations because of the warp mechanic. So I can't imagine this being bad for you if you just view-hotkeyed a couple of important spots like your main and natural to start off with and expand from there as you get used to it. That's how I do it anyway.
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On November 15 2011 14:50 Xenorawks wrote:
You're talking from a defender's point of view. How about reinforcing your troops? You did mention about jumping to the closest pylon to warp in units for reinforcements in your main post didn't you?
I'll give you a very simple and plain example.
A PvP 4gate vs 4gate on TDA.
Probe hotkeyed to 3. Army to 1,2. Shift add pylon once you've confirmed it to be built. You once again disregarded that my experiences have lead me to be forced to often have to re-hotkey units/buildings after they've been built simply because Zerg macro isn't afforded that leniency of 'its too inconvenient to check again a second later', especially with injects.
Quote2
+ Show Spoiler +I'm no fan of mouse scrolling either, but if you do set your mouse scroll speed to a very high %, you can actually scroll pretty damn quickly(even faster than minimap clicking).
You are still disregarding my assumptions. There's absolutely no value in this technique for a player like you since you'd rather play sub-optimally and rely on your speed to make up for it.
Quote3
+ Show Spoiler +You say it's better to warp stuff from the inside of your base and move to the edges and defend a drop because warping it at the edge in sight of your enemy is very vulnerable. Then what's the difference if I use spacebar to go to my nexus and warp stuff around it OR tap my camera to a fixed location OR double tap forges/robo if placed near the drop location OR simply mouse scroll/minimap click to any pylon location close to it and do that? It doesn't make sense to bother to go to the closest pylon in that case since all you want is to warp the units somewhere in your base as long as it is close to the drop but not close enough for your opponent to snipe them.
How do you defend the top AND bottom of your base in maps with larger main bases such as Taldarim Altar or Testbug? These maps have main base areas about twice the size of the camera view. I feel like this centering only seems okay when players don't have enough minimap awareness and the drop is right in their face already. The pylon method is better on the premise that you actually have the map awareness to notice movement.
As for your suggestions regarding forges/robos etc, you're conceding to the idea this method is a legitimate and fast way to double tap back to your base appropriately. The fact is that robos and forges are not consistently built in the same place every game even by Protosses with defined builds. To rely on this inconsistency is a poor decision to make.
If you have good map control you should be at least able to visually confirm what composition is coming in. I'll use PvT as a prime example. (average pattern: 1 medi 1 spot, 2 medi 2 spots, 2 medi 1 spot). I feel it's very important when you have actual map awareness of checking how large a harass threat is before just blinding making stuff or making it too late. You need to reposition with minimap controls in the first place and this facilitates the effectiveness of the technique. I would understand how useless this is if Protosses could defend every drop by blindly making 6 zealots, but this isn't the case.
The Pylon method will cover a larger area than just tabbing back to your main nexus. This much is clear by how you mentioned the use of forges/robos to center the camera.
Quote4
+ Show Spoiler +Your main's not protoss, maybe you don't play it at such a high pace. You are suggesting this method assuming that a protoss always has all his pylons in place before attacking but you have not taken into consideration:
1. You don't have pylons if you're just moving out early. Simply throwing proxy pylons everywhere early game is one thing, getting them destroyed is another.
2. Counterattacks, you don't always expect to have a happy pylon for warpins. You have to bring a probe along all the time. And more often than not, you have to attack before your pylon is in place.
3. 2-3 prompt attacks. I select 2 probes one to build at X location one to build at Y location and select my warpprism to land at Z location and then I move out my army to engage/my opponent army intercepts me. So in this case, how am I going to hotkey my X and Y pylon? I would already have my warpprism on a control group so it is unnecessary to even bring up Z location. Not to mention, I have to be controlling my army at the same time, I ain't gonna move my screen magically to X and Y location to warp stuff in there, but I certainly would use F keys for that.
I feel that was an offensive jab at my credentials. Why should it matter? For the record I'm mid-masters Zerg and skill-wise roughly High Diamond Protoss. I suggested this method assuming that you can ADD on more pylons as you continue your advance. How is it hard to shift click 1 pylon onto 3 others as you push forward? It's not like they have to all be in place.
If you lose all your proxies, and you're still going for the kill, heck you might go as far as to reinforce from your natural. You wouldn't have anything clearly mapped for that (to your natural nexus? that might be a walk away from your actual ramp - see Antiga Shipyard) Sometimes the closer pylon is even at the side of the main in that map. Your method doesn't compound for lost pylons, mine does.
Tactically, I would like to ask why you would be in a position to attack into a base without the reinforcing Warp-Ins?
PvP - Won't be decided without warp-in support. Without a warp in the defender's advantage is not nullified.
PvT - If you've got a big enough army to even poke w/o warp-ins you probably have enough pure army advantage to just look away from the battle and set up hotkeys/warp ins in the midst of things. I mean, if Terrans can kite chargelots while macroing at bases, I'm sure Protoss can go offscreen to macro too.
PvZ - Won't break a zerg without additional warp-ins. Defenders advantage exists for Zerg, and reinforcements are needed. If you can push in from the start then you have no pressure to focus on the actual combat.
If you've gotten that far ahead enough that you can push into your enemy's base before an extra warp-in, you should easily have the opportunity to look away from the army for a few seconds. Otherwise it's just a push based on gimmicky control to win and you're sacrificing the concept of solid play consistent play. I'm not saying that this is an invalid way to play, heck I like being a hero in some random games
1. Yes you don't but you won't need to go back to the Pylon in the first place until you need to warp in, which is usually walk time + 25 seconds. You have ample time to check back on the building probe to add the pylon. TBH I would consider it a control blunder if a probe was hotkeyed with a main army and set to 1a. That's just asking to risk throwing away the attackers advantage into a stronger defender's advantage.
It's just as fast to add a building to a control group as it is to set a camera position.
2. If you can even push up their ramp before a pylon goes down, then you can afford to look back to the probe (once again I strongly believe it's a blunder to group the probe with the 1a army) and control group the pylon as it comes up.
3. You're forced to rely on Mini-map to handle that. I already stated a flaw in the control set-up is that you can't position well with more than 1 warp prism 1 pylon without relying on Mini-map relocation. However you should still be able to manage 2 spots + use minimap for the third.
You said it seems counter intuitive to use an extra hotkey to utilise this technique. You just showed me an example of where you use a minimum of 1 more hotkey to achieve the same results. (you need to indivdually map each pylon placement + Warp prism on control group. On one control group I map my Warp Prism, one of the two pylons, and rely on my minimap for the third); I also do it faster.
just for the record, remapping aggressive positions on the map with the F keys, and recalling which one adhere to which takes more memory and slows down the actual speed of the tactical play.
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Interesting, cute, worth a try... not revolutionary, not even close.
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I really like this idea. Works like a charm. I would give you a medal if I could.
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Isn't this what every toss uses F keys for? I do at least
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On November 15 2011 16:20 elliminist wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2011 14:50 Xenorawks wrote:
You're talking from a defender's point of view. How about reinforcing your troops? You did mention about jumping to the closest pylon to warp in units for reinforcements in your main post didn't you?
I'll give you a very simple and plain example.
A PvP 4gate vs 4gate on TDA. Probe hotkeyed to 3. Army to 1,2. Shift add pylon once you've confirmed it to be built. You once again disregarded that my experiences have lead me to be forced to often have to re-hotkey units/buildings after they've been built simply because Zerg macro isn't afforded that leniency of 'its too inconvenient to check again a second later', especially with injects. Quote2 + Show Spoiler +I'm no fan of mouse scrolling either, but if you do set your mouse scroll speed to a very high %, you can actually scroll pretty damn quickly(even faster than minimap clicking). You are still disregarding my assumptions. There's absolutely no value in this technique for a player like you since you'd rather play sub-optimally and rely on your speed to make up for it. Quote3 + Show Spoiler +You say it's better to warp stuff from the inside of your base and move to the edges and defend a drop because warping it at the edge in sight of your enemy is very vulnerable. Then what's the difference if I use spacebar to go to my nexus and warp stuff around it OR tap my camera to a fixed location OR double tap forges/robo if placed near the drop location OR simply mouse scroll/minimap click to any pylon location close to it and do that? It doesn't make sense to bother to go to the closest pylon in that case since all you want is to warp the units somewhere in your base as long as it is close to the drop but not close enough for your opponent to snipe them. How do you defend the top AND bottom of your base in maps with larger main bases such as Taldarim Altar or Testbug? These maps have main base areas about twice the size of the camera view. I feel like this centering only seems okay when players don't have enough minimap awareness and the drop is right in their face already. The pylon method is better on the premise that you actually have the map awareness to notice movement. As for your suggestions regarding forges/robos etc, you're conceding to the idea this method is a legitimate and fast way to double tap back to your base appropriately. The fact is that robos and forges are not consistently built in the same place every game even by Protosses with defined builds. To rely on this inconsistency is a poor decision to make. If you have good map control you should be at least able to visually confirm what composition is coming in. I'll use PvT as a prime example. (average pattern: 1 medi 1 spot, 2 medi 2 spots, 2 medi 1 spot). I feel it's very important when you have actual map awareness of checking how large a harass threat is before just blinding making stuff or making it too late. You need to reposition with minimap controls in the first place and this facilitates the effectiveness of the technique. I would understand how useless this is if Protosses could defend every drop by blindly making 6 zealots, but this isn't the case. The Pylon method will cover a larger area than just tabbing back to your main nexus. This much is clear by how you mentioned the use of forges/robos to center the camera. Quote4 + Show Spoiler +Your main's not protoss, maybe you don't play it at such a high pace. You are suggesting this method assuming that a protoss always has all his pylons in place before attacking but you have not taken into consideration:
1. You don't have pylons if you're just moving out early. Simply throwing proxy pylons everywhere early game is one thing, getting them destroyed is another.
2. Counterattacks, you don't always expect to have a happy pylon for warpins. You have to bring a probe along all the time. And more often than not, you have to attack before your pylon is in place.
3. 2-3 prompt attacks. I select 2 probes one to build at X location one to build at Y location and select my warpprism to land at Z location and then I move out my army to engage/my opponent army intercepts me. So in this case, how am I going to hotkey my X and Y pylon? I would already have my warpprism on a control group so it is unnecessary to even bring up Z location. Not to mention, I have to be controlling my army at the same time, I ain't gonna move my screen magically to X and Y location to warp stuff in there, but I certainly would use F keys for that. I feel that was an offensive jab at my credentials. Why should it matter? For the record I'm mid-masters Zerg and skill-wise roughly High Diamond Protoss. I suggested this method assuming that you can ADD on more pylons as you continue your advance. How is it hard to shift click 1 pylon onto 3 others as you push forward? It's not like they have to all be in place. If you lose all your proxies, and you're still going for the kill, heck you might go as far as to reinforce from your natural. You wouldn't have anything clearly mapped for that (to your natural nexus? that might be a walk away from your actual ramp - see Antiga Shipyard) Sometimes the closer pylon is even at the side of the main in that map. Your method doesn't compound for lost pylons, mine does. Tactically, I would like to ask why you would be in a position to attack into a base without the reinforcing Warp-Ins? PvP - Won't be decided without warp-in support. Without a warp in the defender's advantage is not nullified. PvT - If you've got a big enough army to even poke w/o warp-ins you probably have enough pure army advantage to just look away from the battle and set up hotkeys/warp ins in the midst of things. I mean, if Terrans can kite chargelots while macroing at bases, I'm sure Protoss can go offscreen to macro too. PvZ - Won't break a zerg without additional warp-ins. Defenders advantage exists for Zerg, and reinforcements are needed. If you can push in from the start then you have no pressure to focus on the actual combat. If you've gotten that far ahead enough that you can push into your enemy's base before an extra warp-in, you should easily have the opportunity to look away from the army for a few seconds. Otherwise it's just a push based on gimmicky control to win and you're sacrificing the concept of solid play consistent play. I'm not saying that this is an invalid way to play, heck I like being a hero in some random games 1. Yes you don't but you won't need to go back to the Pylon in the first place until you need to warp in, which is usually walk time + 25 seconds. You have ample time to check back on the building probe to add the pylon. TBH I would consider it a control blunder if a probe was hotkeyed with a main army and set to 1a. That's just asking to risk throwing away the attackers advantage into a stronger defender's advantage. It's just as fast to add a building to a control group as it is to set a camera position. 2. If you can even push up their ramp before a pylon goes down, then you can afford to look back to the probe (once again I strongly believe it's a blunder to group the probe with the 1a army) and control group the pylon as it comes up. 3. You're forced to rely on Mini-map to handle that. I already stated a flaw in the control set-up is that you can't position well with more than 1 warp prism 1 pylon without relying on Mini-map relocation. However you should still be able to manage 2 spots + use minimap for the third. You said it seems counter intuitive to use an extra hotkey to utilise this technique. You just showed me an example of where you use a minimum of 1 more hotkey to achieve the same results. (you need to indivdually map each pylon placement + Warp prism on control group. On one control group I map my Warp Prism, one of the two pylons, and rely on my minimap for the third); I also do it faster. just for the record, remapping aggressive positions on the map with the F keys, and recalling which one adhere to which takes more memory and slows down the actual speed of the tactical play.
Firstly I apologize if you feel offended, it was not my intention to jab at your credentials. I'm not here to flame your guide or whatsoever, I just feel that it is slightly flawed when you attack your opponent on the fly.
I still think you're missing my point or should I say, I failed to get my point across. You say you find it alright to take a while to look back at the proxy pylon you build and hotkey it. But my point is plain and simple: I don't want to scroll back/double tap back to my building probe just to hotkey that new pylon while in the heat of a battle. What if I shift queued that single building probe to build a few pylons? Do I have to scroll around and hotkey them only after they are being built? Would it be faster if I selected the probe, select a location, queue up a pylon building order, set camera and never have to look back again or check when does the pylon start building? I can devote that time completely to a micro battle/macro in base.
Map awareness has nothing to do with warping units in base. You see medivacs flying towards your base, you go to the nearest pylon and warp in units. I see medivacs flying towards my base, I go to my nexus or nexus then scroll a little and then do the warp in. Fact is, both of us would be warping units at the same time to deal with the drop, it has nothing to do with whether I warp it at the pylon or somewhere slightly further. If I react to the drop the instant I see it on my minimap, there is no way I won't be able to warp in units in time to deal with it just like how you won't have trouble using the pylon style too. There is not much difference, I admit you probably can warp in half a second faster because you don't have to scroll, but if I spot the drop coming, half a second or not, my units would be ready anyway. You took the forge/robo double tap thing a tad bit too seriously. What I mean is, aside from spacebar back to nexus, you can doubletap other buildings if it so happens to be around the drop location too. Spacebar to nexus and then scroll just a tiny little is in no way not fast enough to deal with a drop just like you say: as long if you have awareness and spot it coming before it's in your base.
You say I dedicate a special control group to my dropship/warpprism. That is in the case of a 2/3 prompt attack. If I issue order to build pylon Y at the zerg's 4th, pylon X at the middle of the map where my army is engaging the zerg army, and Warpprism at Zerg's main. How am I going to tap to my pylon Y if I just queued it to be built some time ago and I don't have time to go hotkey it since I'm engaging at X? How do I tap to my warpprism in the heat of the battle as the "closest pylon" since I'm fighting at X? Therefore in this case, I can easily camera to Y to warp units to wreck havoc, double tap control grouped warpprism to warp at the zerg's main, and double tap back my army which is in the middle of the battle. I save the time having to scroll to pylon Y to hotkey it while fighting at X and I won't have trouble with my warpprism either.
Lastly, I want to summarize everything and end this here:
Your method is usable especially scrolling between bases to deal with drops. But it is only a little faster compared to other methods.
The benefit of it above, I don't think it outweighs the ability to camera a soon-to-be-built forward pylon and also control a 3 prompt attack as efficiently when it is hard to differentiate whether "I want to warp in stuff in his main and I want to move my army to fuck his base on the other side, but if I double tap my control group, will I get my warpprism(which is in the zerg's main) or will I end up jumping to my forward pylon" if so happen your army is in between both of them.
You say mouse scrolling is a sub-optimal way to play. I say the trouble to scroll back to where your pylon is built to hotkey it in the midst of a battle is sub-optimal too since it involves scrolling. What if you had to queue your building probe to build a few proxies around or simply build a pylon and move somewhere else, then you can't double tap it back to the pylon you desire and have to rely on scrolling back just to hotkey it too.
By the way Tactically, I would like to ask why you would be in a position to attack into a base without the reinforcing Warp-Ins?
This does not make sense. If I had lesser blink stalkers but my opponent had more normal stalkers, I would have went in and start the micro battle first before my forward pylon is done. When it is, I'll camera back to it and reinforce. But I don't want to wait for it to be built before going in, and neither do I want scroll back to hotkey it while busy blinking back just because I ordered my building probe to do something else. There are so many situations where you have to attack before you can have reinforcements, you don't want to miss a chance to permanently-focefield your opponent out of his base if you see the chance to do it right(even if your reinforcements are going to be late)?
I will say this the last time: scrolling back to hotkey a pylon in the middle of the battle(you can't always assume your building probe is only there to throw a pylon) is just as inefficient as you call mouse scrolling "sub-optimal" way to play. Having the need to assume whether your mineral-line-droppin-warpprism or your forward pylon is closer to your army is quite unreliable.
I don't wish to argue with you further, you obviously put a lot of effort into making this guide and you clearly see me as someone trying to molotov your work and discredit you. I don't know if you are still able to see the point I'm trying to make but one day I hope you do.
Relax and take a look at Hero's stream. Look at how he controls 2 probes to build at 2 different locations plus the warpprism coming from another side and his army from another. Then you see how much APM he needs to control four places at once. I assure you, he does not have spare time to re-scroll back to his pylons just to hotkey them once they started building. And you certainly can't double control group 2 different building probes.
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I am not sure I understand well. We need someone to make a video. Tbh, it seems to me its way better to minimap click warpin then your technique.
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On November 15 2011 17:07 Xenorawks wrote:
I don't wish to argue with you further, you obviously put a lot of effort into making this guide and you clearly see me as someone trying to molotov your work and discredit you. I don't know if you are still able to see the point I'm trying to make but one day I hope you do.
Relax and take a look at Hero's stream. Look at how he controls 2 probes to build at 2 different locations plus the warpprism coming from another side and his army from another. Then you see how much APM he needs to control four places at once. I assure you, he does not have spare time to re-scroll back to his pylons just to hotkey them once they started building. And you certainly can't double control group 2 different building probes.
Apology accepted.
I was fine with the other general comments except for that one jab at my 'skill level'.
Hero's multitasking of his combat situations (hell I watch him often enough) is just in short unbelievable. However I personally feel his techniques are the results of enormous amounts of practice and memorization of the tactic to utilise (working out which areas to Camera Capture, the feel of when all the pieces of his combo come together, and the memory to remember which spots he hotkeyed as which pylons). I don't feel like it's possible to do something like his tactics on the fly if you haven't practiced it quite extensively.
If a player can execute that move on a semi-consistent basis I would personally think that alone makes them a GM Protoss in NA.
EDIT: you won't ever center on the warp prism if your pylons are in the control group. What you need to do to use the warp prism is select control group, individual click prism, and then right mouse portrait to center it.
I think you should actually test this in-game before theorycrafting about how the mechanics of MBS and control groups work out here. You'll be surprised by the results
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Well, it seems that when I hotkey some pylons and 2 or more of them are next to each other, screen just gets centered to them when I double tap, despite my cameras position.
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On November 15 2011 12:44 elliminist wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2011 11:59 CecilSunkure wrote:
Cool idea, but not ideal. You'd have to play assuming you have correct hotkey setups. In a close game a mistake like the screen jumping to the wrong pylon unexpectedly will result in a loss. I'd much rather use my reliable minimap clicking skills, or fkeys to do the job. Not to be offensive but don't Protoss already play on a thin line in the first place with Forcefields and unit micro? I believe it's a reasonable assumption when moving into pro level that it's inexcusable to mess up hotkey set-ups. Minimap clicking is a minimum requirement to being able to use this technique properly in the first place; However, on maps with way larger bases (eg ICCUP Testbug) you need to end up mouse scrolling (pushing mouse against sides of screen) and this ends up meaning that your method is not 'efficient'. To a certain degree many players compensate for their flaws in interface control with pure hand speed. You see this the case with even the best macro players (e.g. Ret) To counter your argument, then it's also totally possible to rely on pure mouse speed and minimap precision to rectify mistakes like jumping to the wrong pylon. But to reiterate, this guide was written from the assumption that players want to utilise the most user interface efficient form of control. One extreme example of a player relying purely on speed is Masq (Est 400 apm?). He constantly uses mouse scroll to get to all the location he needs to go. I don't think this is in any regards a 'better' or more 'efficient' form of play, despite him being able to solve all the problems and winning by mouse speed and spam. Show nested quote +On November 15 2011 12:07 Whiplash wrote:
Could you make a video or something to show how this is used in game? Unfortunately not. Computer can't support FRAPS + SC2 at same time. Though, even if I could I'm not sure I'd be an appropriate Protoss user to demonstrate it - My Protoss mechanics are a league below my Zerg and Terran. The best I have is the replay I used to take screenshots of the technique. Note how minimally I used the mouse scrolling ingame, rather I relied predominantly on control groups and minimap to move across the screen in various places without trying to 'tune' my camera around. REPLAY - Against AIShow nested quote +On November 15 2011 12:14 ZenithM wrote:I used to rely a lot on hotkeys and fancy control groups setups. It's fine as long as the game unfolds in an orthodox way, but in crisis state, when all becomes messed up, you have units everywhere and the opponent as well, you can only rely on your mouse speed and precision.
Use the minimap, it seems less optimal, but that's how the pros do it, because it's reliable, and you have to be fast with your mouse to be good anyway.
Off topic, but just a piece of advice: train youself to be able to use different hotkey setups dynamically in the same game. For example my main setup is HuK's style (1: zealot/sentries 2: stalkers 3: colossus). But I can also switch to some kind of air harass play (1: gateway units, 2: void rays, 3: pheonix) or a late game deathball (1: gateway 2: colossus 3: templars), or even a complete harass gameplay (1: warprism 2: blink stalkers 3: pheonix) and not even hotkey your main army. I believe you don't agree with my basic assumptions about the technique. That being said yes I do also rely on mouse speed and mini-map precision to compensate for my incomplete interface control of the game. However this doesn't mean it's the best way to do things. Minimap awareness and usage should be very important too. I probably can't stress this enough Good Protosses right now already have base pylons spread in a way that the whole area is carpeted with energy to warp in anywhere, anytime. However streamlining this, and ALSO with Warp Prisms in a shared dedicated hotkey, is the objective of considering this technique useful at all. Not hotkeying army is possible, but I don't see why it should be considered 'optimal' play. From what I see of your control groups, you constantly remap warp prisms only when you use them. What if you had them ready for your unit composition from the start. Even if you don't get a single warp prism, the control group is still being dedicated to something useful from the start.
I actually have a dedicated hotkey for warpprisms or specialist units if I end up having to handle gateway units, colossi, HT and phoenixes at the same time.
It's the key to the left of "1", over "Tab", which I remapped to "7" or "8" (I don't remember) so I effectively use this when I have a warpprism, I rarely use 1, 2 or 3 for it.
And I rarely have more than one anyway (which I think is the case for most players).
I think I will try out your method actually, it could be neat and I'm in a phase where incorporating new mechanics into my play is not as hard as it used to so it doesn't cost me much.
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Add a video. my name is thomas and I dont trust if i dont see it.
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I tried this out, and if you happen to have two pylons adjacent (i.e anti-artosis), it will always jump to those.
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On November 16 2011 01:25 Tomazi wrote:
I tried this out, and if you happen to have two pylons adjacent (i.e anti-artosis), it will always jump to those.
Yeah that's how control group double tapping works usually. But I think the OP means you must only bind the proxy pylons you intend to use to warp in. And if you happen to have 2 proxy pylons next to each other, then you're screwed :D
Conclusion: clicking on the minimap, a very useful talent toi have.
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Yeah, warping in to one pylon is the same as warping in to the adjacent one I guess. No need to hotkey both
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V cool idea OP, I had no idea that smart casting applied to building groups. I don't understand people criticizing it as being sub optimal. Its just the same as a zerg hotkeying all his hatcheries to one control group, without rally points. The adjacent pylon thing makes it a little trickier. This is an interesting addition to the protoss macro mechanic, akin to inject cycles.
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I like the thoughts behind this but realistically I feel accidentally binding the wrong thing could result in a loss in some key circumstances, chiefly PvP 
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On November 15 2011 17:01 ProxyKnoxy wrote:
Isn't this what every toss uses F keys for? I do at least
I have a hard time using F keys, so this makes my life a little easier.
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On November 15 2011 10:54 elliminist wrote:
These are my current findings of the MBS game mechanic
1. If multiple buildings in a control group are double tapped to center on them, it will go to the closest one possible. I came to this understanding from using Zerg and just double tapping the 'larva usage' control group (as opposed to the individual base control groups e.g. 5-8).
This is the primary mechanic by which this technique works at all.
2. If you have a unit and a building in the same control group and you double tap, it prioritizes the building to center on, instead of the unit. This appears to work as long as you control group the building before the unit.
Quite a few Australian players use an inject method utilizing a Queen + Hatchery together in a hotkey; most notable in the international scene is Moonglade and tgun. It is actually faster than the backspace inject method at its fastest, because you simply double tap, click V for inject, and then just click on the hatchery. The best thing about this technique is that the hatchery is centered perfectly for your inject, there's absolutely no need to reposition your screen to make it happen!
3. Pylons don't have rallies. Self-explanatory really.
4. Right mouse clicking on the unit portrait centers it to that unit.
When I read this, I believed your assumption about #1 was incorrect, so I tested. Sure enough, it is wrong. It doesn't go to the closest. It goes to the biggest concentration of like buildings. Specifically, I hotkeyed one pylon on one end of the map and two more pylons on the exact opposite side of the map to the same control group. I centered the camera over the solo pylon, and then I double-tapped the control group. The camera popped to the two pylons on the opposite end of the map. They are clearly not the 'closest'. The behavior was exhibited repeatedly without exception.
#2. It doesn't matter whether you add the building or the unit to the control group first. The game apparently looks at the different unit / building types in a given control group, and will center on the type of unit / building with the most in that 'subgroup'. Within a subgroup, it determines the greatest number in close proximity and centers on them. Within that 'closest proximity', it may very well center on the oldest member of the control group.
It's important to note that buildings are not always focused on. If you have 2 buildings and 3 units in that control group, it's going to the units, not the buildings, assuming they are like-units. For example, I put 2 pylons and 3 probes in a control group, and the camera went to the probes in every case.
#4. It's left mouse clicking, not right. Also, it's important to note that there is a hotkey for that feature, which I use frequently for a number of things. It's 'Center on Selection' and it's default is Ctrl + F. Among other great uses, I use it to queue up 'drops on the move' in the following way. Activate my dropship, put the camera on where I want to drop. I actually have a camera location set for this, but it's not crucial. Then, use the minimap to queue up the path up to where I want the drop to occur, then my last right click (move command) and where I want the drop to begin. I hold shift + my drop hotkey, then 'Center on Selection' to immediately zip back to my dropship, where I simply click on it (in the middle of the screen), and the drop is now queued. Without usage of the 'Center on Selection', I would have to either try to click the minimap and find the dropship, or double tap the dropship, which would be ok if it's by itself in a control group, but then I'd need to do the shift + drop command at that point, which is less efficient, IMO.
I'll edit in with more testing of other 'assumptions'.
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Great write up, I have actually been doing this for some time. For all you guys who have a worker probe (like I do), just put the pylons on the workers hotkey. When you want the worker tap the hot key, right click on the probe and the screen will center on him!
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It stills feel extremely hard. because i have to make the decision of macro or micro on the spot which sucks -_-
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Basically you say you hotkey pylons and the camera jumps to the closest hotkeyed pylon with a double tap.
Isnt that basic knowledge?
Should work with every other building aswell...
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On November 16 2011 04:36 MasterReY wrote:
Basically you say you hotkey pylons and the camera jumps to the closest hotkeyed pylon with a double tap.
Isnt that basic knowledge?
Should work with every other building aswell...
I hope it's not basic knowledge, because it's not how it works.
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Great idea, need to try this out sometime. But for me scouting drop i harder than defending it :x
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On November 16 2011 04:52 Kaitlin wrote:Show nested quote +On November 16 2011 04:36 MasterReY wrote:
Basically you say you hotkey pylons and the camera jumps to the closest hotkeyed pylon with a double tap.
Isnt that basic knowledge?
Should work with every other building aswell... I hope it's not basic knowledge, because it's not how it works.
How is that not how it works? As far as I know, MasterReY's description is accurate.
This is a cool idea, but I have to say that I agree with Cecil on this one. The location keys are better suited to this task. Also, the UI offers more location hotkeys than you really need, but the limit of 10 group keys is actually limiting for me. I already use all of them, and I have several keys that have to be repurposed depending on what I need more, so that I lose my construction Probe or my Stargate key when I start harassing, for example, because every other key is already used up.
Still, I wouldn't be surprised if there are players who have a hotkey free and aren't comfortable using the F-keys for whatever reason, and I don't see why this couldn't be a valid alternative for them. It's absolutely better than mouse-scrolling, and even if I don't find it ideal, I think it's cool that you thought of it and took the time to share the idea with the forum.
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On November 16 2011 04:01 Kaitlin wrote:
When I read this, I believed your assumption about #1 was incorrect, so I tested. Sure enough, it is wrong. It doesn't go to the closest. It goes to the biggest concentration of like buildings. Specifically, I hotkeyed one pylon on one end of the map and two more pylons on the exact opposite side of the map to the same control group. I centered the camera over the solo pylon, and then I double-tapped the control group. The camera popped to the two pylons on the opposite end of the map. They are clearly not the 'closest'. The behavior was exhibited repeatedly without exception.
#2. It doesn't matter whether you add the building or the unit to the control group first. The game apparently looks at the different unit / building types in a given control group, and will center on the type of unit / building with the most in that 'subgroup'. Within a subgroup, it determines the greatest number in close proximity and centers on them. Within that 'closest proximity', it may very well center on the oldest member of the control group.
It's important to note that buildings are not always focused on. If you have 2 buildings and 3 units in that control group, it's going to the units, not the buildings, assuming they are like-units. For example, I put 2 pylons and 3 probes in a control group, and the camera went to the probes in every case.
#4. It's left mouse clicking, not right. Also, it's important to note that there is a hotkey for that feature, which I use frequently for a number of things. It's 'Center on Selection' and it's default is Ctrl + F. Among other great uses, I use it to queue up 'drops on the move' in the following way. Activate my dropship, put the camera on where I want to drop. I actually have a camera location set for this, but it's not crucial. Then, use the minimap to queue up the path up to where I want the drop to occur, then my last right click (move command) and where I want the drop to begin. I hold shift + my drop hotkey, then 'Center on Selection' to immediately zip back to my dropship, where I simply click on it (in the middle of the screen), and the drop is now queued. Without usage of the 'Center on Selection', I would have to either try to click the minimap and find the dropship, or double tap the dropship, which would be ok if it's by itself in a control group, but then I'd need to do the shift + drop command at that point, which is less efficient, IMO.
I'll edit in with more testing of other 'assumptions'.
Thank you for taking the time to actually read the details of the thread and go on starcraft to actually test it. This has been rare among the people who made comments or tried to dismiss the style as ineffective.
I dont have access to a game client in the next few hours but i'll get back to testing as soon as i can. However as far as my testing has gone, it seems like i've achieved my desired results but with the wrong mechanical logic for it.
It appears this technique has trouble with directly adjacent pylons (relevant for 4gate play) and i'm not sure about the exact proximity at which the camera will focus on building clumps. In testing i've had 4-5 pylons in the main, and 2 pylons out as proxies and i've been able to center on the proxies consistently without fail.
In my testing of assumption 2 i know from experience that if you hotkey the queen before the hatchery and try to use centered hatch inject, it will center on the queen and not the hatchery. I will explore this again though. The implications to the actual technique however should be minimal.
As for assumption 4 it must be my mistake then. I often dont think slowly about what i press when using the interface. I will update the thread with the corrected technique.
Thank you once again for actually making an effort to study it before posting.
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camera hot keys are way better. I've been using one of mine exclusively for warp-ins and it is very efficient
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Cool Idea, I really like the ideas people are coming up with using the spare control groups available because as it stands now, pros really don't use all of the control groups to the best of their ability and often leave some or at times many control groups unused. We all know progamers have the capability of using all 10 control groups as it is demonstrated again and again in broodwar, I believe this incorporation is simply a step in the right direction.
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On November 16 2011 04:01 Kaitlin wrote:
When I read this, I believed your assumption about #1 was incorrect, so I tested. Sure enough, it is wrong. It doesn't go to the closest. It goes to the biggest concentration of like buildings. Specifically, I hotkeyed one pylon on one end of the map and two more pylons on the exact opposite side of the map to the same control group. I centered the camera over the solo pylon, and then I double-tapped the control group. The camera popped to the two pylons on the opposite end of the map. They are clearly not the 'closest'. The behavior was exhibited repeatedly without exception.
#2. It doesn't matter whether you add the building or the unit to the control group first. The game apparently looks at the different unit / building types in a given control group, and will center on the type of unit / building with the most in that 'subgroup'. Within a subgroup, it determines the greatest number in close proximity and centers on them. Within that 'closest proximity', it may very well center on the oldest member of the control group.
It's important to note that buildings are not always focused on. If you have 2 buildings and 3 units in that control group, it's going to the units, not the buildings, assuming they are like-units. For example, I put 2 pylons and 3 probes in a control group, and the camera went to the probes in every case.
I'll edit in with more testing of other 'assumptions'.
I tested it ingame again.
This 'cetner on most pylons' mechanic only occurs when the buildings are adjacent to the point of touching each other. If there is even one tile between the two buildings, it will not focus on those buildings as the center point.
I also tried multiple units + single building selected. As long as the units are not clumped and touching each other, it will always center on the building. This includes having the multiple units within the same camera screen of each other.
I tested this repeatedly and the observation right now is that your claim my assumption is incorrect only applies whenever the units or buildings are touching each other.
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Why does everyone want to grade this MECHANIC.
It isn't good or bad, it is. It seems like something an intelligent player could use to speed up their play significantly. However, if you don't use it, you're probably not going to notice a significant disadvantage.
Thanks OP, I'll definitely work on incorporating this into my play.
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This mechanic seems interesting, and at least some player may actually prefer this to camera hotkeys. However, I have tried it and I can confirm that hotkeying clustered pylons gives strange resulst.. and it's not only clustered pylons.. it happens also to pylons not touching each other but being part of a cluster of buildings.. I'm even coming to think that i happens when two pylon are just NEAR each other.
I've however noticed that pylon clusters follow the same rule among them, they just have higher priority compared to lonely pylons: when you double click the group and there are multiple pylon clusters, you get the screen on the closer pylon cluster.
The mechanic itself would be interesting, but unless there is a way to avoid this problem, it seems a bit too much unreliable.. :-/ ..seems like the only way is watch out and avoid binding pylons which are close to each other..
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EPT
