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EDIT: Below is a visual layout of my setup
EDIT: and a link to download the hotkey file.
EDIT: Hotkey file is updated., and updated again to remove red Terran portraits. Guide continues in posts below, updates will not be applied to OP until there are more of them.
https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=1044e2f4d0d5cf35&resid=1044E2F4D0D5CF35!107&parid=root
I've seen a lot of posts on this forum asking about improving apm, their macro, control setups etc. This post details a partial solution for adressing the above problems using the most efficient control scheme possible. The idea is that by doing the basics (producing units) in the simplest way possible, you can "free up" apm, which can be spent on microing units. If you are already playing as fast as you can and have hit a wall in terms of how many actions you can perform, by adopting a semi-grid setup you could overcome this.
****These ideas work for all races, however I do not believe a random could use this; my current setup leaves 26 hotkeys unbound for protoss and zerg. Because each race has some unique functions (Z burrow, T cloak etc) that in a semi-grid setup would all go on the same key, I do not think it's possible to have a semi-grid setup that works equally well for all three races at the same time. The control scheme below is based on TERRAN.*****
*****This scheme does NOT use a mouse with mouse buttons or anything like that. While mouse buttons are nice, I think this shows that you can do just fine without them.
Each player will have their own distinct version of the semi-grid, so I have not posted a graphic. The instructions will help you determine what needs to be where, so just follow along on your keyboard.
ESTABLISHING YOUR KEYS
1. Establish your home keys
When I put my left hand on the keyboard, the most comfortable position for me is:
Pinky on A, Ring on W, Middle on E, Index on F, Thumb on space. I have longer fingers, so for me to use ASDF is uncomfortable. These 4 keys will be your heavy lifters. This is what is meant by semi-grid; the keys have multiple purposes depending on what is selected, like in a grid layout, but unlike a grid the hotkey's location does not necessarily correspond to it's location in the command box. Your home keys are the 4 easiest keys for you to press,and they will be bound with the most important functions.
2. Establish your control groups
Place your hands on your home keys. Now, with your index finger (resetting to its home key after each move): move one key up; one key diagonally up; one key to the right; down one key; diagonally down one key; two keys to the right. These are going to be command groups. If your index finger is on F, the control groups become: R, T, G, V, B, H. This is only 6. I use 3, 4, 5, N for the others.
3. Establish your secondary keys
You need 5 more secondary keys, and which ones you use depends on how you place your hand. AWEF gives secondary keys of S, D, Q, C, X. If you use something else, your secondary keys are going to be whatever 5 keys are easiest to reach for you that aren't already acounted for. Note that one of these secondary keys is going to be assigned to the starport unit you are LEAST likely to produce, and will not typically be used. More on this later.
If you are using your left hand on the keyboard, you should notice that after following the instructions above, all of the keys you will be binding are reachable without moving your hand much.This allows for tremendous efficiency. Its also easier on the wrists and joints; you also dont have to worry about awkward finger positions. The less you have to move and contort your hand the better.
4. Tab, Caps, Shift, Ctrl, Alt, Space, Camera Hotkeys, Lift Off, Rally
I use my pinky for these (thumb for spacebar), and their functions remain largely the same. I use caps-lock to cycle through (instead of tab) because with a pinky on A, caps is easier to hit. Tab is now my find idle worker. I use `, 1, 2, 3 for camera location hotkeys. Ctrl, Alt and Space are unchanged. Rally is still Y, lift off is now on 6, and so is land.
BINDING THE KEYS
Now that you have your keys established, go into the hotkey editor and bind in the following order:
Note: (P)inky, (R)ing, (M)id, (I)ndex refer to the home key covered by that finger.
SCV: Hold Position (P), Attack (R), Build Advanced (M), Build Basic (I). Move, repair etc go on secondary keys.
Basic Buildings: One building on each home key (the most important to you) rest go on secondary.
Advanced Buildings: 4 most important on home keys, rest secondary.
UNIT: Hold, Attack and Move will carry over from SCV. Special ability 1 and 2 are bound to M and I in place of building functions. Ghosts will require extra abilities to be bound on secondarys.
CC
Build SCV, Upgrade to Planetary/Orbital go on 3 home keys.
UNIT PRODUCING STRUCTURES
Each unit on a home key. Whatever you produce more of should go on the index or middle fingers. The starport is the only structure that produces 5 types of units; stick the battle cruiser on a secondary key.
TECH STRUCTURES
Each upgrade on a home key. The Ebay has 5 upgrades so one needs to go on a secondary key. whichever you use least.
USING THE SYSTEM
With your hotkeys set up like this, your Four home keys will handle just about every action you can think of. Instead of moving your hands around, you can pretty much leave them where they are, because no matter you have selected, the M and I fingers will handle the important things you need to do with it, and even if you need to do something odd (requiring a secondary key) because of the setup, your fingers are always adjacent to the secondary keys, so its hardly a reach. Plus, your control groups are easier to reach. A caveat to this, however, is that you MUST make good use of control groups. When the same 4 keys do almost everything, it is VERY important that you have AT LEAST 4 groups established (CC's, Production Buildings, Upgrade Buildings, Units). The whole point of all this is to make it easy to macro, allowing you to spend more time focusing on using your units. A typical production cycle (1 minute, 1CC, 1-1-1, techlabs) is 3 SCVs, 2 marines, 1 tank, 1 air unit and takes all of ELEVEN ACTIONS to produce. Using this control method to produce would look like this: [ 4(fff) R(ff)TAB(f)TAB(f) ] How fast could you execute that sequence? Pretty fast. And that covers your macro for the next minute off one base, meaning the rest of the time you can be controlling units, and controlling units is what jacks up APM, NOT macroing.
DISCUSSION
Its definitely possible to stick almost all of the game function onto a small handful of keys, and It surprises me to see pro players with their hands flying all over the keyboard. If they can achieve so much despite moving their hands all over, what more could be accomplished if they used a control scheme that allowed them to keep their hands in place, and that typically required moving at MOST one finger, one key over? And for all the people who aren't pros, maybe doing things this way would free up APM to spend microing units? I believe this post is SIMILAR to the Dark Grid layout, but that this considers a few different ideas, and that players who are struggling with maintaining macro while controlling units could benefit from these ideas. The biggest difference between this and Dark Grid is that Dark Grid sacrifices some efficiency in exchange for keeping all the hotkeys bound. That is nice, but if you are only interested in one race, semi grid I think offers more.
Though this applies to terran specifically, does anyone have any ideas or changes that would apply towards using zerg and protoss? How would you incorporate a 5 button mouse?
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I am one of those players that simply can't use standard hotkey. Yes i think the standard set up sucks!
So i played around with grid grouping a lot. The major issue with grid layouts is that sometimes you haven't seleceted what u think is selceted. I play pretty much with "the dope as fuck" set up (found somewhere here on TL). However sometimes i stim my whole army because it is selected and not a single worker as i thought.
However i love your approach of defining your best fingers and positions and work it out from there.
Could you provide your layout?
gl hf
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I'm still not sure on the best way to visually represent my layout, because some keys have so many functions that to just print them over an image of a keyboard would be tough. I tried making an image but failed to come up with something that was coherant, since the keys are so stacked up. However I think I have a nice way to show it with words.
My Home Keys are: A, W, E, F. If you don't know what I mean by this, read the post above.
UNITS SELECTED
A= Hold Position
Q= Move*
W = Attack
S = Stop
X = Patrol
F = Special 1 [Build Basic (SCV), Stim (MM), EMP(Ghost), PDD(Raven) Yamato Cannon(BC) Siege(Tank) Land(Viking)]
E = Special 2 [Build Advanced (SCV) Snipe (Ghost), Autoturret (Raven) Unsiege (Tank) Fly(Viking)
D = Special 3 [ Repair (SCV) Call in Nuke (Ghost) Seeker Missile (Raven) Unload (CC, Medivac)]
C = Special 4 [ Return Cargo (SCV) Cloak (Banshee, Ghost**) Load (CC, Medivac)]
Z = Special 5 [ Harvest Resources (SCV) Un-Cloak (Banshee, Ghost**)]
The most important functions for unit control are on A, W, E, F, no matter what units you have selected. You need hold position and attack, and you need your specials. You don't need to use stop or move typically, but even if you need to they are close. If you use Patrol alot, switch Patrol to S and Stop to X. Hold position is better than stop in most situations anyways.
* I would completely unbind this key since you can just left click, except for the fact that if you want medivacs to follow units you can't just click on the unit (the medivac will pick it up), you have to actually issue a move command.
** Because cloak is common to both banshees and ghosts, I recomend doing the ghost hotkeys first and seeing where cloak ends up. Its possible to put cloak/uncloak on F and E, but then it would make snipe and emp more awkward. In my mind, snipe and emp are more time sensitive than cloaking/uncloaking, so I give them priority.
BUILDINGS
Y = Rally
6 = Lift Off, 6 = Land
Making Basic Buildings | Building Functions
F= Barracks [ F = Train Marine, E = Marauder, W = Reaper, A = Ghost C= Add tech, D = Add react.]
E = Supply Depot
W = Refinery
A = Command Center [ F = Train SCV, E = Upgrade to orbital, W = upgrade to planetary]
Q = Engineering Bay [ F = Unit Weapons, E = Unit Armor, W = Hi-Sec tracking, A = Bldg. Armor, Q= Neosteel]
S = Sensor Tower
D = Bunker [ F = Stim, E= Salvage, C/D= Load/unload]
C = Missile Turret
Tech Lab (on Barracks) : [ F = Stim, E = Combat Shields, W = Concussive, A = Nitro Packs]
Making Advanced Buildings | Building Functions
F = Factory [ F = Tank, E = Hellion, W = Thor, C = Tech Lab, D = Reactor]
E = Starport [ F = Medivac, E = Viking, W = Banshee, A = Raven, X = BC, C/D = TL/R]
W = Armory [ F = Ground Weapons, E = Ground Armor, W = Air Armor, A = Air Weapons]
A = Ghost Academy [ F= Research Mobius Reactor, E = Ghost Cloak, A = Build Nuke]
C = Fusion Core [ F = Yamato Research, E = Behemoth Reactor]
Tech Lab(Factory) [F = Siege Mode, E = Blue Flame, W = Thor Strike Cannons]
Tech Lab(Starport) [F = Banshee Cloak, E = Corvid Reactor, W = Seeker Missile, A = Caduceus, D = Durable Materials]
CAMERA KEYS
~ = Camera 1
1 = Camera 2
2 = Camera 3
COMMAND GROUPS
3, 4, 5, R, T, G, V, B, H, N
Tab, Caps, Shift, Ctrl, Alt all have their normal functions, although I use capslock to switch between tabs instead of the tab key, since its closer to my pinky.
I don't use all the camera hotkeys because I only use them as base cams. I double tap unit command groups to jump the camera to different spots on the map.
A typical macro cycle for me, in terms of key presses, off 3rax(1TL, 2R), 2 fact (TL), 1 port(R), with all buildings on one hotkey (R) would look like: R f f f f f (TAB) f f (TAB) f f. You can always set the keys up such that the bulk of your composition can be produced using only the F key and the TAB key. The command groups are all nearby so that it is easy to switch between the groups, and the fact that the keys are so stacked means that no matter what you have selected, your hands are in the proper spot to use it.
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your setup sounds pretty inteesting, a kind of simplified dark grid. I would have to rearrange so that ASDF is my home row. Could yoo provide your setup as a downloadable file?
You find it in C:\Users\USER\Documents\StarCraft II\Accounts\11111111111\Hotkeys
i would like to give it a try!
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https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=1044e2f4d0d5cf35&resid=1044E2F4D0D5CF35!107&parid=root
This is the link to my hotkey file. I guess just click that, and stick it in the appropriate folder.
I am familiar with darkgrid. I have never gamed with it, but I have read the post on it. I actually thought about adding this there but opted not to. The biggest difference between semi-grid and darkgrid is that darkgrid is a specific layout, while this is more a philosophy on how to come up with your layout. Also, even though your hotkeys and my hotkeys will look slightly different, and even if we both play with completely different unit comps, our production cycles will look almost identical: [CG] f f f f f [TAB] f f f f [TAB] f f f f f. This is why I consider this a grid layout; instead of determining hotkeys based on their physical location in the command box, you determine hotkeys based on what buttons are comfortable to hit and how often you intend to be performing the action.
I personally think that macroing while controlling units is much easier when 90% of your clicks are the F key.
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ok i willl give it a try!
i will adapt it to my needs and report back asap.
I agree that darkgrid is maybe a bit of an overkill. Howver it is suitable for all 3 races
thanks a lot!
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Glad the link worked out, I've never hosted anything.
This layout is certainly suitable for all races, just not all races at the same time, unfortunately, and I don't think that can be worked around. Part of what I am interested in, is what changes might be made for other races.
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Hello Rikter, i have read most of your OP but cant read it all in massive detail as i am currently at work. I made my hotkey setup as a heavily modified Darkgrid layout, and i would describe mine as a "semi-grid" as well (in that all command pane hotkeys are on Q W E, A S D and Z X C to produce a 9x9 grid, with everything else around it)
I think the way you have chosen to go about creating your hotkey guide is great in terms of methodology, although sometimes the outcome seems counter intuitive to me in terms of organization on the keyboard which makes learning the layout hard. Its good however that it produces a setup thats most efficient for your hand size and after learning the setup would definitely be a benefit. May i ask, is there actually a reason you have found to need both Stop and Hold Position? To be honest i just have Attack, Hold and Patrol on Q W and E, but im still working in my hotkey setup also. I found i like 2 for CCs/Tech and 3 for Rax/Fact/Port the best, as i can 2>E to make Scv's and 3>Q to make marines. (All of my unit/building production fits in the 9x9 grid also and generally runs logically with however it is laid out in the command pane)
Like you, i use ~ and 1 for Camera but my cams stop there, i actually decided to have the rest on the F keys for some reason even though they are so far away, i think having everything crammed into the same area can every now and again cause some issues, especially if complex shift/ctrl key holds are needed to camera move and whatnot. Instead of Darkgrids odd recommendations, i have Ctrl (Make Command Group) and Shift (Add to Command Group) on my Mouse4/Mouse5, seems alot more intuitive and useful (still learning to use it all the time or as much as possible)
My command hotkeys are roughly the same as yours, i use 4 and 5 for Scout/Harass, R and T are Medivac/Air Group, F is Main Force, V is Ghost/Tank and Spacebar is Ghost/Tank. I also use Caps Lock for my "whole army" sometimes, if i want it grouped up together also for quick micro.
Anyway, congrats on a great guide, i will certainly be following to see where it ends up. If i had any suggestion it would be to practice using Mouse4 and Mouse5 to create/add units to command groups and maybe consider the trade offs of having a certain amount of logical intuitiveness to where your hotkeys are laid out, even if it does effect your speed slightly negatively if your mind can arrange it better it will still effect your overall efficiency positively - this however can be overcome after spending a long time rote learning the hotkey setup so that your muscle memory knows what button does what without needing to recall it consciously.
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Thanks for your post. Which parts specifically seemed counter- intuitive?
As far as stop goes, it isn't very useful to me...its a very rare spot where you don't want your units to shoot. I've thought about just unbinding it, and may do so, but S is a key I don't like to hit. I'm starting to think about the utility of having a command group or camera hotkey in its place...
My guess on the counterintuitive thing is that I use my index to switch command groups, when the index is the finger that controls critical functions of the groups being switched to. The thing is, my production buildings go on 4 and 5, which I hit with the middle finger, so index never leaves its key spot when I macro. When I control units, its true that when I'm switching between groups rapidly index must reset to use specials. However It does make it easy to issue attack or hold commands to multiple command groups quickly, like when handling multiple drops. Basically I am more concerned with being able to quickly tell my units to hold or attack than I am telling them to stim. If getting that special attack off is that important, best believe I'm paying attention! If you played mech I could see how giving the order to siege is wayyyy more important than hold posi micro. In that case you wouldn't want to be cycling command groups with the same finger you need to activate siege mode.
It seems that preferred unit comp can definitely effect how you set your keys up.
I use ctrl to form command groups, shift to add, my tab and capslock functions are switched though.
As far as the mouse goes, when I first made the hotkeys blizzard didn't support the extra mouse buttons or something because I couldn't make it work. I think noww they have fixed that, I may look to update. My original thought on mouse 4 and mouse 5 was to use them in place of special1/special2. The thing is, even if specials are off F and E, building functions aren't so I can't just make them a command group.
I have also been thinking about switching my home keys to the far side of the keyboard, G H J K, so that command groups are now split out around your hand more. However pinky is not long enough to hit all the available keys without moving your hand.
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To clarify, i think the counter intuitiveness i get from layouts like this is mainly to do with learning the layout in the first place, not actually using it. Although, the intuitiveness that will be felt from a layout this detailed will no doubt change depending on how big your hand is, how fat your fingers are and so on.., as every key is placed to fit perfectly with your hand. This allows your hand to hit the keys fast once your mind has a complete understanding of the layout, but until then it may be hard and a bit jumbled in peoples minds (I experienced this with DarkGrid until i decided to change a multitude of things). As far as this goes, it makes me tend to agree with your idea that it should be more of a guide on how to put together a hotkey setup for your own hand, not particularily just a hotkey setup that you can copy for yourself.
As far as binding Mouse4/Mouse5, you will likely need to get your mouse software and install it, then make Mouse4 output "Shift" and Mouse5 output "Ctrl".
Switching caps lock and tab is an interesting idea, it would defintiely make another command group more accessible for me. What are your thoughts on using Capslock (or Tab in your case) as another command group?
I just changed my Attack/Hold/Patrol around actually also, after testing out how my finger movements work - Making it feel more comfortable to attack queue through my command groups and hold position micro. W for Attack (seems to be the consensus) and now E for Hold posie (close to F for stutter stepping my bio), Patrol being less important is now on Q. The only thing im thinking of doing now is moving my Special Moves upwards by a single line in my 9x9 grid, i believe the only unit that this will be a problem with will be Ghost, as it has alot of special moves. This will mean Stim is on A instead of Z, and consecutive specials are on S and D instead of X and C. I do this because it means nomatter what unit you grab, their first special is always A, and so on.. (Siege, Strike Cannons, Stim, Snipe, AutoTurret?, etc will all land on A with cloak being abit of a problem as it is active on multiple units in different spots, i just have a special On/Off for cloak)
The whole hotkey subject deserves -alot- of research i think, when you noticed that even at a pro level there is no real hotkey setup that is regarded as the "best" or "most efficient" - everyone tends to use alot of different set ups, sometimes to a point where it seems completely illogical. It seems odd to me how pro's that spend so much time tinkering and training the aspects of this game dont want to spend numerous hours studying the best hotkey setup. I think this may be because to a pro, changing hotkey setups requires rewriting a -whole- heap of muscle memory, so its not a very fun concept to consider. However, once the research has been done people will be able to pick up an efficient setup from the word go and get into it.
*ramble*
**Edit**:
The point you made about hitting 4 and 5 with your middle finger is a key reason as to why hotkey setups should be made for the individual hand that uses them, if i was to try to hit 5 with my middle finger (with my fingers at your home key positions) it would throw my reach all out of wack and be too difficult.
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There are some counter intuive building keys. Counter intuitvie if we consider it a grid based setup.
However i like the philosphy behind this setup. Adapting your setups to the most comfortable handposition and work your way up form there seems great.
I tried it and i placed the buidling groups on R&T, which is probably not very logical as it will make the unit keys harder to reach. Have to place them on 4&5 i guess, but then my index seems to leave th f key and my pinky tends to move up to q...
Another consideration might be to u your middlefinger (E) for the most common comands, as the index is moving around all the time in order to reach the control gorups. I think it's faster to hit R with index and press E with middlefinger, then hitting both with my index
have to see how this will turn out from me..
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Id also like to mention the merits of downloading a key mapping program and changing Left Windows Key and Left Alt to both output Left Ctrl. This will make your left control key about 3x larger, a very nice benfit. Left Alt should not be needed (I was actually using Alt instead of Shift to add to command groups but changed that)
Also, another reason i put my main army hotkey on F is that F has an anchor point on it (the little notch that you can feel with your finger) allowing you to easily discern where it is by touch incase your hand gets lost.
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Lukas, omni voiced similar concerns, and I made some changes based on them. As far as having trouble with the hitting 4/5 with middle without pulling off A or F, a tiny bit of movement isnt terrible. If it is alot, you might want to invert the top and bottom row. With my left hand laid out on a keyboard and my pinky on A, my middle finger naturally falls on 4. I can hit that key easily so I use it. With hands my size, the lower keys are what is "out of reach" for me. If my middle naturally falls on 4, can you imagine how hard it is to hit X? I jam my bottom row with stuff I don't often use. You might want to reverse this and put the less useful stuff up top.
You hit the nail on the head, it isn't a grid in the traditional sense, though it shares some concepts, hence semi-grid. Virtual Grid may be a better description.
I like what you and Omni have to say about how you moved the keys a bit so that you could cycle command groups without uncovering the key that activates special1. In order for me to do that, I have unbound stop completely and moved the special functions for combat units to E, S, D. This way, when I cycle my unit CG's with index, my other 3 fingers are on special1(E), Attack (W) and Hold Position (A). Using the middle to hit 4/5 (CC's+B,F,St.) means that index finger stays on F, which still handles the most important of the building commands. There was less trouble with this than I thought, although unbinding stop makes most units go red, since stop appears on almost every command card. I only moved special functions for combat units to the E, D, S format. Because I am not changing it to a control group, I'm not wiping out the SCV build functions or any of the other stuff that I want to be doing with index. I have updated the Hotkey file in the link to reflect the new changes.
I see a guy like TLO dealing with carpal tunnel and wonder what kind of controls he was using. I am not in any way saying this particular setup will help with carpal tunnel; I just mention it because there is definitely evidence that you can damage your hands via excessive use of a computer keyboard, and there are certainly (I think) ways to minimize some of the stresses, even if this setup isn't the answer. Also, if you were missing fingers or something, it might be easier to play the game with controls set up like this. Call of Duty is good in this regard, their control schemes are designed to be friendly to people who are missing digits.
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I always assign all terran keys even if i place them on the most useless keys just in order to avoid red units 
i use a celeritas keyboard which allows me to assign Ctrl to the windows key. On top of that i use ALT+(Command Group) as an alternative to to create control group.
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Thats a good idea. I'll just rebind stop over on some other key; that should fix all of the red terran portraits, although the rest of the races would still be red.
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Oh my gawd, its red!
I just put up with it to be honest, it doesnt really effect anything.
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I have edited the hotkey link so that the new non-red is available. If you rebind Stop to some random key somewhere else it makes the red go away. All terran units and Terran buildings that can lift all have stop in the command bar, so that one key looks ugly if you leave it unbound.
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Ok Rikter i believe we can continue our discussion here  .
Now, i have just noticed that our idea of a "Semi-Grid" system differ somewhat, only slightly however. My grid for the most part follows the layout of the command pane, with a few minor and a few major exceptions. This isnt so great in terms of efficiency especially at end of the road but it is great for general intuitiveness and learning. It does make learning the setup alot more friendly. Perhaps my method could be implemented as the "Beginners Setup" if we do get a project going, we could make it so that its more of a stepping stone without being too daunting - More of an intuitive grid that gives them the ability to get used to the control groups and such before learning a bunch of different unit control and special use hotkeys. Anyway, lets talk sometime - im abit too tired to get too deep into it now. Id like to go through everything with you if possible and map out the most effective Semi-Grid system we can, while remaining as intuitive as possible. We could also start to dial in the changes that will need to be made for differing hand sizes as we go. But basically, at the end of the day we want to have pored over everything to make sure its all fluid and as easy/efficient as possible.
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EPT
