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The Great Hotkey/Setup Discussion Thread 2024!

Forum Index > SC2 General
Post a Reply
WombaT
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Northern Ireland26163 Posts
Last Edited: 2024-02-27 17:49:26
February 27 2024 17:48 GMT
#1
Hey there’s plenty of this chat around, but it’s all over the place, half of us probably don’t play anymore etc but I find this area interesting.

Was wondering what you fine Liquidians do as per hotkeys and related things, and more intriguingly why you’ve made the calls you have.

For me personally, general ordering is a force of habit. Regardless of how I’m hotkeying stuff elsewhere I have a kind of right to left from eco/production through to army, with the rightmost being the most peripheral or niche eco element, and the leftmost being main army. Even from my WC3 days.

6 is a nice anchor for me for a main building, I’ll hotkey 7 for upgrade buildings like forges or evos/engi/armories

5 is always the ‘main’ production building, be it gates or barracks, I also hotkey the ‘air’ building here, be it a Stargate or a Starport for tabbing

4 is the tech production building aside from that, be it a robo or a factory.

Gives me 1-3 for various army things. 1-2 are usually overlapping for me, as in 1 = the whole force, 2 = a select section. So for Toss 1 = the whole main army, 2 = stalkers specifically so I can independently blink them forward. Or for Terran 2 are tanks. 3 is usually some kind of specialist unit

Remapped a hotkey to Q that generally doubles as something I want to do separate from bit engagements or my main army. So it moves from a scouting probe to an initial observer to say, an adventurous Warp Prism I want to use for backstabs

Remapped the ‘create group 8’ hotkey to the 10 key. This is a super situational thing. I can’t physically stretch to ctrl+8 easily, but a quick tap of 0 alone is easy enough. I use this for very specific scenarios. Have to pull workers due to a mine or something? I’ll tap that 0 and I can redirect them quickly. If I’ve a base coming up I’ll sometimes box enough workers for the transfer beforehand and be ready in advance.

I’ve moved some basic commands, D is hold position, G is now patrol. I used to have patrol at Y because T for stim into Y for a patrol split flowed neatly, but I’ve got less reliant on patrol splitting.

So I’ve got a neat ASD line with a little gap for G now for basic commands.

As I’ve moved other stuff around, I’ve basically remapped spell casters with the following rationale:
F = main spell
R = more situational spell
C = even more situational spell

There’s a bit less stretch this way. Blink stalkers are going off F. Templars are storming off F and feedbacking off R. Etc etc

Because this is quite constant I feel it aids consistency

I’ve also remapped build worker, and a worker building something to E. As my Nexus/CC is anchored off 6, E is just a naturally nice place to build a worker, and I’ve made it consistent across Protoss/Terran. Sure it’s not a huge deal but it lets me hover with 6/Nexus as an anchor and not stretch much

All units that change form I use E/F to navigate, E is their mobile form and F is their notable/damaging form. So tanks siege on F or prisms are ready for warpins on that. just more comfortable if a lot of your macro is anchored in 4-6 on the keyboard.

Fingers crossed I get some engagement from the hive mind, I find this area fascinating. Hope to hear from you!

'You'll always be the cuddly marsupial of my heart, despite the inherent flaws of your ancestry' - Squat
Moonerz
Profile Joined March 2014
United States459 Posts
Last Edited: 2024-02-27 18:47:59
February 27 2024 18:28 GMT
#2
I've left mine pretty much default with a few changes. I moved my camera hotkeys down one so they start at F2, that way my primary 3 bases are F2, 3 and 4. Never really was a big fan of having to jump over to f5 for a third base. (Especially in WoL/HotS where my terran was almost exclusively 3 bases and gogogo parade push)

When I was playing more seriously I had unbound all army hotkey, but now I have that bound to f1 and idle workers to tilde.

As for macro cc on 4, production on 5 and upgrades on 6. 7 and on basically never get used unless I'm building a lot of nukes or something.

3 is usually my main army. 2 and 1 vary but can be certain units like mines or libs, or my harass squads.

I used to have my main building on 5 and production 6, upgrades on 7. But I didn't like having my hand slid over that little bit extra when I rarely would use 4 army hotkeys. So I felt like I was trading accuracy on the keyboard for an extra army hotkey I didn't really need.

Edit: I probably should make some improvements lol, especially with how useful rapid fire is for snipes/libs etc.

Also forgot 1 more thing I have the camera zoom out max and zoom in max bound to my side mouse buttons so I can look for obs/invis units.
WombaT
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Northern Ireland26163 Posts
February 27 2024 18:59 GMT
#3
On February 28 2024 03:28 Moonerz wrote:
I've left mine pretty much default with a few changes. I moved my camera hotkeys down one so they start at F2, that way my primary 3 bases are F2, 3 and 4. Never really was a big fan of having to jump over to f5 for a third base. (Especially in WoL/HotS where my terran was almost exclusively 3 bases and gogogo parade push)

When I was playing more seriously I had unbound all army hotkey, but now I have that bound to f1 and idle workers to tilde.

As for macro cc on 4, production on 5 and upgrades on 6. 7 and on basically never get used unless I'm building a lot of nukes or something.

3 is usually my main army. 2 and 1 vary but can be certain units like mines or libs, or my harass squads.

I used to have my main building on 5 and production 6, upgrades on 7. But I didn't like having my hand slid over that little bit extra when I rarely would use 4 army hotkeys. So I felt like I was trading accuracy on the keyboard for an extra army hotkey I didn't really need.

Edit: I probably should make some improvements lol, especially with how useful rapid fire is for snipes/libs etc.

Also forgot 1 more thing I have the camera zoom out max and zoom in max bound to my side mouse buttons so I can look for obs/invis units.

Interesting, I shifted all army over to caps lock so I could move base cams to F1 for main, F2 for natural etc

Also remapped space bar as a camera hotkey for either a rally for T, the forward point of my creep as Zerg or something pertinent otherwise as Toss. If I proxy a forward pylon it’s that, otherwise it’s something else, early game PvP it’s the ramp so I can bounce to a probe to build that quick battery to block adepts,
'You'll always be the cuddly marsupial of my heart, despite the inherent flaws of your ancestry' - Squat
FFXthebest
Profile Joined February 2024
75 Posts
Last Edited: 2024-02-27 19:16:21
February 27 2024 19:14 GMT
#4
As a toss player

1) whole army
2) depending on army composition. Could be for stalkers or cols or disruptors or pheonix
3) the spell casters (mainly HT)
4) nexus
5) gateway
6) star gates
7) robo
8) forge/cyber core
Cygnus
Profile Joined February 2004
United States847 Posts
February 27 2024 19:36 GMT
#5
Do a few basic things that work for me (Terran player)

- Physically popped off 4 and 8 keycaps to have a nice tactile separation of hotkeys (generally use 1-3 as unit groups, 5-7 as production, (9-0) as upgrades/orbitals)
- Remapped "F2" select all to the spacebar
- Remapped "F1" so F1-F4 are location hotkeys
- Idle Worker now "`" since I gave up F1 for locations

Everything else rather default
Draddition
Profile Joined February 2014
United States59 Posts
February 28 2024 00:11 GMT
#6
Always love a good hotkey discussion. Major adjustments I've made:
Obvious ones are:
- "Q" and "~" being moved to control groups (I think just queens have to be shuffled off Q to make this work).
- Some silly units (like ultralisks) moved over to something reachable.
- All upgrades (traditional upgrades and unit specific) moved to "A", "S", or "D"
- F1-F8 to camera hotkeys, though I only use the first 4.

By favorite custom change:
- Inject moved to "T". Means a lot less hand movement/stretch when cycling camera hotkeys and injecting.


As far as usage:
~ is typically a dedicated runby/drop force
1 is for drop defense or secondary army
2 is main army
3 is specialty units (mutas, spellcasters, etc)
4 is bases
Q is for race specific needs. Nydus as Zerg, production as Terran.

Currently in the middle of switching from zerg to terran, so interested in hearing some other improvements for T.
WombaT
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Northern Ireland26163 Posts
February 28 2024 08:46 GMT
#7
On February 28 2024 09:11 Draddition wrote:
Always love a good hotkey discussion. Major adjustments I've made:
Obvious ones are:
- "Q" and "~" being moved to control groups (I think just queens have to be shuffled off Q to make this work).
- Some silly units (like ultralisks) moved over to something reachable.
- All upgrades (traditional upgrades and unit specific) moved to "A", "S", or "D"
- F1-F8 to camera hotkeys, though I only use the first 4.

By favorite custom change:
- Inject moved to "T". Means a lot less hand movement/stretch when cycling camera hotkeys and injecting.


As far as usage:
~ is typically a dedicated runby/drop force
1 is for drop defense or secondary army
2 is main army
3 is specialty units (mutas, spellcasters, etc)
4 is bases
Q is for race specific needs. Nydus as Zerg, production as Terran.

Currently in the middle of switching from zerg to terran, so interested in hearing some other improvements for T.

Fun but annoying tip for your opponents, if you hotkey your gather resources in rapid fire fashion, you can interrupt mining by just holding down a key rather than spamming right click relentlessly

I’m pretty darn bad at the game but I do swear by some of my hotkeys.

I swear by having a non-base camera hotkey, especially for Terran. But I leave it flexible between racial uses, personally use space bar for it.

Terran - Your production rally. You can get into quite a decent rhythm where you’re moving army or harassing, or pushing and you just bounce back to your rally to add to your control groups.

Protoss - I used to hotkey a forward pylon but they’re not really as much of a factor anymore. Latterly I’ll set that camera to either my ramp in PvP where you need to be speedy to block an adept, or just my ‘front door’ in PvZ if someone tries a runby, always pays to make sure your wall is tight!

Zerg - I try to keep pushing my camera hotkey to the edge of my creep, so I can bounce to the location and spread tumours even if Queens aren’t around.
'You'll always be the cuddly marsupial of my heart, despite the inherent flaws of your ancestry' - Squat
Harris1st
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Germany7001 Posts
February 28 2024 08:53 GMT
#8
1 - main army
2 - second army
3 - casters / specialists
4 - Rax/ Warpgate
5- Factory/ Robo
6 - Stargate/ Starport
7 - Nexus/ Orbital/ Hatch
8- Upgrade buildings Ebay/ Evo/ Forge
9 - Upgrade buildings Armory/ Spire/ CyCore/ else

Rest is Standard GRID
Go Serral! GG EZ for Ence. Flashbang dance FTW
Luolis
Profile Blog Joined May 2012
Finland7142 Posts
February 28 2024 09:41 GMT
#9
I have mostly standard hotkeys.

1. CC
2. Rax
3. Fac
4. Starport
5. Main army
6. Drops/tanks/ghosts
7. Drops/vikings
8. Ebay
9. Armory
0. Drops/tanks (if i have ghosts out)

Notably i have 6, 7 and 0 bound to mouse side buttons so they work well as army hotkeys.
pro cheese woman / Its never Sunny in Finland. Perkele / FinnishStarcraftTrivia
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