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Hi everybody, I've been building my own hotkey setup for awhile now, trying out different stuff, tweaking stuff here or there, trying to find the ultimate hotkey setup for Terran. I noticed that on TL there's alot of general hotkey threads, alot of P/Z threads but not so much Terran, so I just wanted to help out fellow Terrans to possibly avoid the 3 year battle I have had to optimize my keyboard.
I think I have reached what may be the final evolution of the hotkeys I use so I figured I would share them as I think they have drastically improved my control and multitasking.
Instead of posting up a complete list of the keys which could be hard to establish the differences I figured I would just do a write up about the keys I changed, as I do use alot of stock keys. All these changes start from the "standard" hotkey profile.
I'd always like to add that if you have small hands or aren't very flexible you might want to be wary of these; I play piano and can do an octave+ stretch very easily so reaching from CTRL to 0 for me is no biggie.
The first thing I am going to cover is the control groups,
+ Show Spoiler +
I use 6 for all my Command centers, 7 for rax, 8 for factory, 9 for starport. 0 will be used for Ghost academies or in the early game, my techlabbed buildings. I like this setup as it allows me to 1. very quickly and easily access my production facilities individually without using tab while macroing, allowing me to rally different units different places(ie. front door for helions on 8, backdoor on 9 for banshee) and 2. it leaves me 5 control groups for army control. Basically you need to learn to use your pinkie/ring finger to tap the units you want to build while tapping through buildings with ring and middle fingers. Also armory and ebay go on 6 with the CC's for easy access.
Keep in mind when you read the next bit that what I am discussing represents the army control groups in the mid-late game. Early game I usually just use marines on 1, ground harass/scout scv 2 and air 3
Control group 1 is always main army. For most matchups this constitues MMM. Ghosts are never to be added to this CG. 2 is "speciality unit". So this is usually: tanks in TvT/TvZ or ghosts in TvP. If I need to split my army while double- dropping I might add the CG2 units into CG1 and then use 2 as "second army" . But obviously that situation doesnt happen every game. Also another rare situation is one where you have tanks or ghosts out at the same time; at this point I will usually just have the tanks in CG1 ghosts in 2 and use click-micro or tab to siege(Ireally hate the tab key and minimize its usage as I find it annoying when you have to remember how many clicks to get what you want.) 3 is always my air armada. 4 and 5 are the "drop" or secondary army hotkeys. I like to have these things hotkeyed on 4/5 because I dont have to click on the minimap to find drops; in the heat of a big multitasking war this helps me because I can potentially be in 4 places at once being able to switch between then while only tapping 2 keys rather than having to consciously point at something in the map.
Next I am going to talk about my camera hotkeys
+ Show Spoiler + So the first change your going to want to make is to take off "all army"(or re-map it if you actually use it, I don't), and remap "idle worker" to Y. This will undo the hotkey for rally and for cybernetics core, as I'm a terran player I just made cycore R instead, and who needs a hotkey for rally, you have rightclick  . F1 is actually really god for idle worker and normally I wouldn't change it but it's essential for the cameras. So for cams, you set up "view location 1-4" as F1-F4. Make "assign location" for these CTRL+F1-F4. For cameras 5-8 you want to set the "view location" as Shift+F1-F4. and the "assign" as F5-F8. The reason for these assignments is that within 4 keys you now have the potential for 8 cams at a minimal stretch. I used to use standard F2-F8 but I found I would never use the really high ones as in the heat of battle it was a big stretch. So right now I use F1-F4 as my first four bases, and the locations 5-8 are assignable based on conditions; my ramp, a spot on the battlefield I want to be able to zip back to in case I get ganked while i'm not looking at my army, and also lets me rally units slightly behind the battle to one of the locations 6-8 and then quicklly go there, add them to hotkeys or quickly get them into the battle. I Like to keep my rally on the ground about a half-screen back from the contested zone as I found 1. if you have it on a unit and it dies, it can mess up a whole cycle, which is APM-intensive to go back to base, CTRL click a bunch of units forward and re-do rallies. also those units can make the difference between breaking through and doing critical damage, or not and losing the game. 2. if you do end up getting pushed back, you wont have to endlessly grab swarms of troops that are rallying through into the clutches of the enemy. This can happen a lot if your multitasking. I sometimes use multiple cams for "fallback points" that I will establish previously, these will be good chokes/areas to get a good concave. That way you will be able to quickly view it and send your army/rallies there, without having to scroll/click minimap.
Finally I will cover the hotkey changes optimized for the Terran race. My focus here was to keep as much on the left side of the keyboard as possible.
+ Show Spoiler +
First big change is the "patrol to ` key(left of 1). This makes it bane spltis and pre-splits so much easierI'm a big fan of pre-patrol splitting as it adds a "movement" element to your forces, making it harder to pick out good fungal targets etc. Think of a shooting range, if your split but standing still it doesn't take a genius to see the best place to storm/fungal. Whereas if your entire army is dancing in unsynchronized rhythms (by patrolling small blobs in different directions) it makes that decision harder to get perfect. Because I play on both Mac and PC, I have two hotkeys set-up on "Patrol" which represents the key next to 1 on both system, so that I don't have to change hotkeys everytime.
The next important change regards the "Q" key. I remapped this to do the following skills:
-Ghost: Nuke
-Building:Lift/Land
-Medivac: Afterburner.
-Ghost Academy: Build Nuke.
-Battle Cruiser: Yamato Cannon.
-Fusion Core: Yamato Research.
-Build Basic: Sensor Tower
-Build Advanced: Fusion Core.
Mobius Reactor moves from M to R. That one hotkey kept insuring I forget it as the more you have to stretch the more likely you are to make a mistake in heat of combat.
The energy upgrade for BC's also moves here.
The second row of Ebay upgrades becomes "S,D,F" for easy access.
"Load" ability moves from L to E. Makes it much easier to load SCV's into bunkers and when you need to load a few units in a drop quickly and right-clicking the medivac doesn't work. It also keeps with the D&E dynamic which is present throughout the Terran race.
Finally "Build planetary" becomes F.
Anyways, I'm pretty tired but I think I have covered the basics of mym hotkey setup. If I find out how to upload my settings directly for download I would so shoot me a PM or post up if you think you have any ideas on how to optimize these keys further!
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Interesting. How do you defend using 6,7,8,9 for buildings? From my perspective, that would make tapping pretty much impossible
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You have hotkeys from sdf to even 890 on your keyboard. Do you really think it is efficient to make your hand slide all over the keyboard? I use a modified version fo grid with control groups from ^ to t (german keyboard) and they are sometimes hard to reach without moving my hand.
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In my experience, the simpler your hotkeys are, the more you get out of your game, unless you are really dedicated progamer that knows exactly what is he doing.
So for the most common settings, I use this:
1 - main army (MMM or mech units)
2 - supprot/air (viking/raven)
3 - specialized units (ghost/mine)
4 - all production
5 - all ccs
6 - all upgrades
f-keys for first 3 bases, done.
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vbr: you mean tapping as in cycling through my macro keys to check production drop mules etc right? I don't find it to be a problem, its a pretty simple prop once your used to it. Like I said though I can do an octave stretch easily on a piano so for those who aren't comfortable using their pinkie it might not work without a lot of effort.
My "tap" goes something like this: middle finger 6, ring s, index finger 7, pinkie finger builds marines on a. either pinkie or ring formarauders on D, taps R for reaper or middle will go down to then get the G for ghost. Then you cycle your middle/index finger over 2 keys and do a similar macro or you can just hit 8 with the pointer then stretch to hit 9. I practiced by setting my early SCVS and CC to 6-7-8-9 and just cycling endlessly to make it natural.
To address you and GraNite's concerns I would say that yes I realize technically I could be a fraction of a second quicker having production on 4-5 closer to home but I made a conscious decision that the larger distance would not lose me as much time as the efficiency of having the ability to quickly split my army all on different hotkeys, as i was always running out of hotkeys. You'd be surprised how much easier those extra 2 "army" keys make so many things, not just drops.
For example if you want to setup a huge flank it's the easiest way I found because if you use a hotkey setup like everlong suggested, your going to need to box your flank, send it in, then switch to your other side army and do it because you wont have any hotkeys before 7 that are free, unless you want to have to set a new hotkey and then undo it after(long). whereas I prefer to be able to instantly send the 2 in so that there is less room for error. Also saves me a lot of time with double dropping people and pressuring the front because I can be in so many more places with less clicks then someone who has to click around the map and box their units. Your much more likely to lose your drops to banes/storms/reinforcements with that extra attention you need to zip around. You'd be surprised by the amount of damage you do to mid-master players who simply can't keep up with this level of multitask.
Finally I realize it's all spread out a lot, but I find it easier to do stuff with more space as it feels more like piano for me then if everything is clumped west of the TGB line.
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I think not a lot of people in the SC2 scene (even some professionals) realize what a good keyboard setup is like. I see a lot people talk about how it's important to use hotkeys, but these people rarely realize how using those hotkeys past a specific point (for most people as well as me 6, for small-handed 5, for large-handed 7) is training you for bad and unoptimal mechanics.
I see a lot of professionals do this as well. They are wasting their time moving their hand on the keyboard, often causing stress in their hand and restricting themselves from performing as fast as could be done. This is done with the mouse as well; people use mouse settings that require them to move their hand on the mousepad a lot, creating a pivot point at their shoulder.
Because I come from a relatively hardcore World of Warcraft raiding background, I haven't spent all that much time analyzing different mouse settings, as it was not as important in an MMO as it is in an RTS. Hence, I won't talk about mouse settings. What I am more than qualified to talk about, though, is keybindings (meaning your unit keybinds, camera keybinds, hotkeys, etc.).
Let's talk from the Protoss point of view. With HotS Protoss players have gotten a lot more spellcasters to utilize. Let's imagine we're going to reserve 1-4 for units, 5 for Nexi, 6 for Gateways, 7 for Robo, 8 for Stargate and finally 9 for Forges and 0 for a random purpose, like another important tech structure, such as a Dark Shrine or a Robotics Bay.
Aight, so we're in a game. I'm going to control my army with 1, while tapping 5-6-7-8 for my production structures. I'm going to want to warp in some Zealots, High Templar and start an Immortal. I'm going to press 6, Z, hold Shift down and click a bunch. Great, that was fast. With practice you could use your index finger for 6, ring finger for Z and pinky finger for Shift. No problems have arisen at this point. We'll now use our index finger to press T, hold down Shift again and click a bunch. Everything is still going smoothly, we have no need to use the same finger for two actions in a row. We'll now go ahead and press 7 for our Robo. To create an Immortal we'll have to use our index finger again to reach I.
What just happened was we slowed our own maximum capacity down by a lot by having to use the same finger for two actions that follow each other. Try it - pressing 7 and I with only the index finger is a lot slower than using our middle finger to press 7 and then using our index finger to press I. So what's the problem?
Your middle finger is now resting at 7. Look at the position of your hand. It's in the middle of the keyboard, far from the reach of two extremely important keys for SC2: Shift and Control. Here's where we meet the second problem. By sliding your hand off-position you're causing an uncomfortable situation for your brain-hand control, as well as spending time sliding your hand across the keyboard.
In the middle of all the action that's going on in SC2, pressing 7 and then I will leave your hand in a position in which you're going to have to reach for Shift and Control if you needed them immediately - something you don't want to have happen. What would happen if after the Immortal we'd build a Void Ray or two? 8-V from the position you've left you're hand in after building that Immortal? No, thank you.
Consider using a Grid-like setup so efficient which will eliminate all these conflicts and you'll find yourself with a keyboard setup that's going to improve your play considerably. Just a comparison, instead of doing 7-I-8-V for an Immortal and a Void Ray, I do G-E-T-E. Holy crap that was fast in comparison, and look where my pinky is! It's still resting inbetween Shift and Control.
A lot of thought process goes into creating a hotkey setup as optimal as possible, and it breaks my heart to see especially professionals not optimizing their hotkey setups to be as efficient as possible for the fastest APM. The cold hard truth (as O'Leary would say) is not that money is all that matters, but efficiency and accuracy is all that matters. You might achieve accuracy with any keybinding setup, but you won't achieve efficiency with any.
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On March 28 2013 01:39 FLUFFYPenguin wrote:
I think not a lot of people in the SC2 scene (even some professionals) realize what a good keyboard setup is like. I see a lot people talk about how it's important to use hotkeys, but these people rarely realize how using those hotkeys past a specific point (for most people as well as me 6, for small-handed 5, for large-handed 7) is training you for bad and unoptimal mechanics.
I see a lot of professionals do this as well. They are wasting their time moving their hand on the keyboard, often causing stress in their hand and restricting themselves from performing as fast as could be done. This is done with the mouse as well; people use mouse settings that require them to move their hand on the mousepad a lot, creating a pivot point at their shoulder.
Because I come from a relatively hardcore World of Warcraft raiding background, I haven't spent all that much time analyzing different mouse settings, as it was not as important in an MMO as it is in an RTS. Hence, I won't talk about mouse settings. What I am more than qualified to talk about, though, is keybindings (meaning your unit keybinds, camera keybinds, hotkeys, etc.).
Let's talk from the Protoss point of view. With HotS Protoss players have gotten a lot more spellcasters to utilize. Let's imagine we're going to reserve 1-4 for units, 5 for Nexi, 6 for Gateways, 7 for Robo, 8 for Stargate and finally 9 for Forges and 0 for a random purpose, like another important tech structure, such as a Dark Shrine or a Robotics Bay.
Aight, so we're in a game. I'm going to control my army with 1, while tapping 5-6-7-8 for my production structures. I'm going to want to warp in some Zealots, High Templar and start an Immortal. I'm going to press 6, Z, hold Shift down and click a bunch. Great, that was fast. With practice you could use your index finger for 6, ring finger for Z and pinky finger for Shift. No problems have arisen at this point. We'll now use our index finger to press T, hold down Shift again and click a bunch. Everything is still going smoothly, we have no need to use the same finger for two actions in a row. We'll now go ahead and press 7 for our Robo. To create an Immortal we'll have to use our index finger again to reach I.
What just happened was we slowed our own maximum capacity down by a lot by having to use the same finger for two actions that follow each other. Try it - pressing 7 and I with only the index finger is a lot slower than using our middle finger to press 7 and then using our index finger to press I. So what's the problem?
Your middle finger is now resting at 7. Look at the position of your hand. It's in the middle of the keyboard, far from the reach of two extremely important keys for SC2: Shift and Control. Here's where we meet the second problem. By sliding your hand off-position you're causing an uncomfortable situation for your brain-hand control, as well as spending time sliding your hand across the keyboard.
In the middle of all the action that's going on in SC2, pressing 7 and then I will leave your hand in a position in which you're going to have to reach for Shift and Control if you needed them immediately - something you don't want to have happen. What would happen if after the Immortal we'd build a Void Ray or two? 8-V from the position you've left you're hand in after building that Immortal? No, thank you.
Consider using a Grid-like setup so efficient which will eliminate all these conflicts and you'll find yourself with a keyboard setup that's going to improve your play considerably. Just a comparison, instead of doing 7-I-8-V for an Immortal and a Void Ray, I do G-E-T-E. Holy crap that was fast in comparison, and look where my pinky is! It's still resting inbetween Shift and Control.
A lot of thought process goes into creating a hotkey setup as optimal as possible, and it breaks my heart to see especially professionals not optimizing their hotkey setups to be as efficient as possible for the fastest APM. The cold hard truth (as O'Leary would say) is not that money is all that matters, but efficiency and accuracy is all that matters. You might achieve accuracy with any keybinding setup, but you won't achieve efficiency with any.
I appreciate your post but why are you talking about Protoss controls involving the I key? Every letter-key you need to press in the hotkey format I suggested is west of the TGB line on a QWERTY board. So you really only need to press F5-F8 or 6-7-8-9-0. If 0 is too far for GA you can always put it on 6. Also I don't agree with you that Shift and Control are keys you need to keep your fingers by at all times. Yes they are important but they are also two of the easiest to find keys on the board. When I play Protoss I only use these keys as I am used to it, if i was a dedicated protoss player I probably wouldnt even hotkey my gateways and use W(or a repositioned version of the "Warp in" hotkey) instead.
I appreciate the concerns you have but like I said I think people such as yourself put too much value on minimizing motion in this aspect. You can't learn to play piano by learning to minimize the range you need to move, you learn by maximising the efficiency of which fingers do what and increasing your dexterity.
Also I did mention in my post the way that I have trained my fingers NOT to use 2 actions on the same finger. Read the post again plz.
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On March 27 2013 21:17 Everlong wrote:
In my experience, the simpler your hotkeys are, the more you get out of your game, unless you are really dedicated progamer that knows exactly what is he doing.
So for the most common settings, I use this:
1 - main army (MMM or mech units)
2 - supprot/air (viking/raven)
3 - specialized units (ghost/mine)
4 - all production
5 - all ccs
6 - all upgrades
f-keys for first 3 bases, done.
lol I have the exact same hotkeys^^
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On March 28 2013 03:19 Spoink wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2013 21:17 Everlong wrote:
In my experience, the simpler your hotkeys are, the more you get out of your game, unless you are really dedicated progamer that knows exactly what is he doing.
So for the most common settings, I use this:
1 - main army (MMM or mech units)
2 - supprot/air (viking/raven)
3 - specialized units (ghost/mine)
4 - all production
5 - all ccs
6 - all upgrades
f-keys for first 3 bases, done. lol I have the exact same hotkeys^^
Pretty sure MMA and a lot of Terrans use those keys too
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worst hotkeys ever
I only use group hotkeys from 1 to 5 because my hands arent as big
everything above 6 is random press because its way too far away
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On March 28 2013 03:19 Spoink wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2013 21:17 Everlong wrote:
In my experience, the simpler your hotkeys are, the more you get out of your game, unless you are really dedicated progamer that knows exactly what is he doing.
So for the most common settings, I use this:
1 - main army (MMM or mech units)
2 - supprot/air (viking/raven)
3 - specialized units (ghost/mine)
4 - all production
5 - all ccs
6 - all upgrades
f-keys for first 3 bases, done. lol I have the exact same hotkeys^^ I use the same ones, except with 2 and 3 swapped. Also bound grave and space bar as control groups for dropships, etc.
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On March 28 2013 06:45 xgtx wrote:
worst hotkeys ever
I only use group hotkeys from 1 to 5 because my hands arent as big
everything above 6 is random press because its way too far away
Thanks for your opinion. You are more then welcome to leave constructive criticism but saying they are the worst hotkeys ever when they are hotkeys designed for people with flexible hands with dexterity, which you clearly are not, is wrong. In fact there is no right or wrong in this debate, you don't see me stating that using 1/2 the potential of your keyboard because you can't be bothered to develop the dexterity to be able to accurately hit those keys is wrong, don't do it back to me. Thank you.
You shouldn't consider anything you have to reach for "a random press" lol
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I use completely custom hotkeys where I never move to the right of the G button on qwerty.
One tip that helps me in gameplay as well as ergonomically, I keep my Engineering bays on the same hotkey as all my ccs. This allows you to check on your upgrades every time you want to build SCV's. Unfortunately this does not work for zerg when you have built a lair or a hive as the evos get stuck between your hatcheries, but for terran and protoss it is very useful.
I do second the point of those hotkeys being a bit overly inefficient.. I can reach C-F on a piano, but I still wouldn't want to go further than my hand can very comfortably reach when it isn't necessary..
Sorry, but compared to mine, those hotkeys you have are actually really bad.
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On March 28 2013 08:05 Hollandrock wrote:
I use completely custom hotkeys where I never move to the right of the G button on qwerty.
One tip that helps me in gameplay as well as ergonomically, I keep my Engineering bays on the same hotkey as all my ccs. This allows you to check on your upgrades every time you want to build SCV's. Unfortunately this does not work for zerg when you have built a lair or a hive as the evos get stuck between your hatcheries, but for terran and protoss it is very useful.
I do second the point of those hotkeys being a bit overly inefficient.. I can reach C-F on a piano, but I still wouldn't want to go further than my hand can very comfortably reach when it isn't necessary..
Sorry, but compared to mine, those hotkeys you have are actually really bad.
so you are saying you cant reach from control to 9 on a keyboard when you can reach from C3 to F4 on a piano on what fingers, pinkie to thumb? I actually agree with you about the CC/ebay hotkey thing, I started doing it last night rather than having upgrades on 7/8, I think I mentioned that in OP, i'l have to check and edit as necessary. I used to do armory on 8 ra on 7, but yeah it was much easier having all ups on 6.
Again I believe it is necessary to need to reach to for those production keys to free up room for extra unit hotkeys on 4-5. You need production every 20-25 seconds, so doing a cycle every 15 seconds is not horribly inefficient.
So what hotkeys do you use that are that much better why don't you post them up?
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Going to try remapping 7-8-9-0 to y-h-n-§ and see how i get on. Using only 6 camera hotkeys instead of 8.
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On March 28 2013 11:31 GaNgStaRR.ElV wrote:
Going to try remapping 7-8-9-0 to y-h-n-§ and see how i get on. Using only 6 camera hotkeys instead of 8.
I use Y-H-N-U-J for camera saves (middle mouse is mapped to Ctrl), it's quite nice.
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i didnt know so many ppl have so many fancy hotkey settings
i just play 1-6 and standart grid ^^
dont really feel like i need camera hotkeys as im pretty comfortable with managing my camera through army/building hotkeys
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Y-H-N was a fail for me. Having to reach for N to hit my starport was too much.
So I tried using 5 for CC and 6 for all production for a couple games.
Ended up messing up all my addons/building floats. I'm so used to 7qq 8qq to switch my rax and factory when building addons....having to do it with the mouse just felt SOOO clunky. Also made my hands hurt since everything is so close together. Started to cramp up and shit haaha
back to original hotkeys although im back to f1 as idle worker, since 8 cam keys was too much. 6 lets me do 3 bases+3 action points.
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if u want to get better, stop using hotkeys for drops and use minimap its much faster
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btw start playing without sound, it will boost your skill too, its easy after a moment, i dont use sounds at bw , sc2 or dota anymore, and now i see drops before "ure under attack"
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EPT
