I've been messing about with different layouts and an issue whilst doing this is trying to get everything to fit together nicely, so that everything falls in a compact block under your hand, easily accessible etc.
10 control groups (at least to me) Seems excessive, so I'm wondering if it would be acceptable to the wider community to have less than 10 groups as standard in a keyboard layout.
Poll: How many control groups on average do you use?
2-3 control groups for army, 1 for hatcheries and 1 for queens. I set cameras for each hatchery, and I'm trying to add an additional camera for rally/creep into my game.
Does a particular race tend to use more/less control groups or cameras than the others?
It took me time to get used to it, but nowadays I'm using 10 control groups (skill level: diamond, used to be master when I was more active)
Race: Zerg 1 main army: the big blob (lings, roaches, hydras, swarm hosts) 2 "distraction army": lings for runbys, mutas, sometimes infestors in special compositions 3 early game: I've grown the habit of using "3" for small stuff, like the initial overlord, the drone that builds the 1st hatch, the 1st overseer late game: casters / high tech (vipers, infestors), highly situational (can also be used for air armies) 4 all hatcheries 5 evolution chambers, sometimes the spire(s) in odd games. 6 queen 1 (hotkeying single queens also works as some kind of camera hotkey, because I can easily jump to the home bases of each queen) 7 queen 2 8 queen 3 9 creep queen 0 (remapped to ^) scouting drone / lings in the early game, "roaming army" in the late game (mostly used for scouting purposes, can also be used for runbys, surrounds, flanks)
6 to 9 are remapped to f1 to f4, f5 is being used for injects. A normal inject cycle takes about 1 second.
I've tried using camera hotkeys for the creep spread, but I couldn't get comfortable with them. Hotkeying the creep queen works quite fine, though.
I've got between 170 and 230 apm. I'm playing a very macro-oriented style, because my micro isn't too great. I either win by simply overwhelming an opponent, or outmultitasking him. I also play pretty reactive. My usual gameplan is "scout, defend, harass, kill", which is why my hotkeys are setup the way they are.
1 - Main army 2 - Templar (stalkers, oracle or phoenix in early game) 3 - MSC 4 - Gates 5 - Robo 6 - Nexus 7 - Stargate 0 - (rebound to space) Harass alt - Select all army (only used if I lost my MSC or an observer and I need to find it)
F1 - Main F2 - Nat F3 - Third F4 - Fourth F5 - Ramp/Natural wall -> Fifth
Ripped my hotkey setup straight from players like Dear, Trap and Rain back when I was in silver/gold league. They may be inefficient but now after reaching Diamond I can't force myself to change them.
1 - Main army 2 - Blink stalkers/scouting probe/harass unit 3 - early game 2nd nexus/ Templar as soon as they get out 4 - early game 1st nexus/ lategame MSC 5 - Gateways 6 - Robo 7 - Stargate 8 - All nexus
I picked up a trick from watching Rain's stream of spamming between my main and natural nexuses while in the early and mid game to see when to build probes using 8 (my hotkey for all nexuses). This trick has really improved my probe production not only because it allows me to see the individual queues for my 2 nexuses but also because it focuses my mind on it with the spam when I might otherwise forget.
Scrub Protoss, and user of a custom hotkey setup adapted from the old Chameleon setup, here
E, R - Probes for scouting/building/proxies 3 - main army 4, 5 - observers/air force F - Nexi and all tech buildings D - all production buildings T - Mothership Core/High Templar G - Warp Prism B - Blink/Harass
In shorter games I only use 8 of these, but by lategame I end up using 9 or 10.
1 - Main Tab - Natural (or proxy if I cheese) Q - Third W- Fourth C - Chrono cam/Wall-off against Zerg
I don't usually get past 4th base (heh) so I usually top out at 3 or 4 camera locations used.
On January 29 2015 17:40 JulDraGoN wrote: alt - Select all army (only used if I lost my MSC or an observer and I need to find it)
This happens way too often for me, probably because I set my HTs to my MSC hotkey when I make them Thanks for the tip.
4 control groups. When zerg - 1 for hatcheries, 1 for queens, 2 for the army. When Protoss - 1 for Nexi, 2-3 for the armies, 1 for Robo/Stargate... And obviously W for Warpgates. Map location hotkeys... I dont use those. Using "Next base" button is enough for me.
Yeah, I'm extremely lazy. Aaand that's why I can't play terran.
I use an older version of the core, and i feel like my hotkeys are not that efficient... anyways
Terran 1(9) Main army 2(ö) Vikings 3(ü) Ghosts 5(o) Production 6(p) Orbitals 7(ő) Reaper/scout 8(l) Drop/harass/flank force 9(é) Drop/harass 2
Zerg 1(9) Main ball 2347 (öüóő) Dynamically Mutas, infestors, broodlords, viper/corruptor, swarmhost havent really found a good system 5(o) Hatches 6(p) Queens+evo chambers 8(l) Harass/runby/homedefense 9(é) Creep queens
Protoss 1(9) Deathball 2(ö) Templars 3(ü) Core 5(o) Production 6(p) Nexus+forges 7(ő) Scout probe/obs/halluc phoenix 8(l) harass stalker/phoenix/warp prism/oracle 9(é) proxy stargate, or above things
SAA (Backspace) for rallying paradepushes back and forth sometimes with T, and finding unbound units/ observers/core with P and Z
Basecams the core gives 6, i dont really use 5-6 too often, but i do use 1 additional rally/warpin cam
I think its definetly worth to rebind your hotkeys together if you are not too much used to the classic setup, and Jak and his team has a pretty good (altough sometime borderline crazy) setup.
I play Terran and I'm Gold heading towards Platinum.
My control groups:
1: Bio army 2. Tanks 3. Vikings
4. Some kind of unexpected play such as a drop or ambush group if I'm not too stressed in the game.
5. Orbital Commands, Engineering Bays, Armory 6. Barracks, Factories, Starports
I don't use camera keys yet, but I plan to start working them in. I usually just click on the minimap, but there are some times where I could see using it to be slightly quicker.
I've used this set up since WoL and I don't ever stray from it. It works for me very well.
1- Main army clump (roaches, lings, banes, hydras, ultras etc.) 2- Secondary units that need to be managed differently from the main clump. (muta's, swarmhosts, vipers, roaches with an roach bane allin etc.) 3- Spellcasters (I put my creep queens on this hotkey until I get out infestors or vipers, if I use both infestors and vipers, I move vipers to the second hotkey.) 4- Siege units and buildings I want to start an upgrade on when it finishes in the earlier game (broodlords, swarmhosts) 5- Hatcheries 6- queen(s) from main hatch 7- queen from natural hatch 8- queen from 3rd hatch
I messed around with putting nydusses on 9 and evos on 0 but I have not managed to make that a habit.
Around gold zerg, with my own custom hotkeys that made me start using camera hotkeys, and allows me to use fungal and blinding cloud decently efficiently.
5 hotkeys I frequently use space: hatcheries FGV: main army(ies) + caster in army (BH: more army subunits, but almost never used in pratice) 2: queens (13: harass/scout, but almost never used in practice)
clicked 4 camera hotkeys, but is 1 + number of bases tab: rally point WER4T5: camera base location (in that order)
Inject is moved to Q, so injecting only involved 2QWER! And main spells are all at D, so attack and fungal and blinding cloud is FA click (a-move), GD click D click (fungals), VD click D click (blinding on top of fungals). Manageable even in gold! :D I still suck, but I love my hotkey setup!
0 (Q) : MSC. 1 (²) : Harass units (Phoenix, Warp prism...). I use that hotkey in PvT for my drop defence squad too. 2 (&) : Casters (Sentries...). I use a separate hotkey for sentries so that I can use HTs and sentries simultaneously in lategame situations while having everything in my army. 3 (é) : Army (aka deathball). 4 (") : Nexi. 5 (') : Robos. 6 (() : Stargates (PvP, PvZ) / Forges (PvT).
I don't use camera hotkeys at all. 0% skill, 100% Protoss.