Once you have ctrl + select the unit type, then set it as a ctrl + # group.
So Air units as Group 2 and ground units as Group 3. So that when in battle you can just click 2 and then attack on an air unit.
Also, if you have a single group of mixed units, you can hit Tab to cycle between them to use abilities. I don't think this lets you move parts of the group separately, though.
It does help to do things like group all production buildings and cycle through kicking off unit builds, and to fire off ghost EMP and marine stimpacks in a mixed army.
You can set control groups. I always set my orbital command at control + 1, my barracks as 2, etc.
If you had a special group, like 10 banshees for example, highlight them and hit control + 3 or whatever number. If you add more banshees later you have to re-highlight all of them and redo control + whatever number.
Double clicking works and I do it, but if the things are moving around it's very hard to double click one and get the whole group highlighted.
Make as many control groups as you can handle. If you have 1-9 filled with stuff and you only use 1-3 of them, you might want to rethink what is going on.
Yes, it is very good to have a billion hotkeys for every unit combination you might possibly need to select, but if you make it more confusing, you are only hurting yourself. You also can only have a certain number of hotkeys, so hotkeying each unit is not effective. You need to be used to having all of your units hotkeyed or separated into groups in order to effectively micro units. You should have your production buildings each on their own hotkey (pretty normal to have your econ/main building on 1, production building type A on 2, type B on 3, etc.) so you can macro without looking at your base all the time.
Make as many control groups as you can handle. If you have 1-9 filled with stuff and you only use 1-3 of them, you might want to rethink what is going on.
Yes, it is very good to have a billion hotkeys for every unit combination you might possibly need to select, but if you make it more confusing, you are only hurting yourself. You also can only have a certain number of hotkeys, so hotkeying each unit is not effective. You need to be used to having all of your units hotkeyed or separated into groups in order to effectively micro units. You should have your production buildings each on their own hotkey (pretty normal to have your econ/main building on 1, production building type A on 2, type B on 3, etc.) so you can macro without looking at your base all the time.
To conserve hotkeys, I've been doing pretty well with *all* my production buildings (including command centers) in one group, usually 4 because it's easy to hit.
I can tab through the building groups and fire off production super fast. For example with 2 CC's, 2 rax, 1 fact, 3 starports, I can do 4ss<tab>(tab)daa(tab)<tab>s(tab)<tab>eee. That gets SCVs, marines, a marauder, a tank, and banshees going in a second or so.
Beyond that, I tend to use 1-3 for active battle groups. Groups 5-8 are devoted to individual command centers or other points of interest on the map, so I can double-tap the group to jump to that base.</tab></tab></tab>
When I play zerg I almost always stack all my hatcheries on the same hotkey. This does give me trouble at times because of rally points when I get several expansions up and running. I rely on creep highway to fix this but I still have problems. Also the Queen makes having each hatch its own hotkey more useful.
Hotkey designation is definitely one of the areas I need to standardize at some point. At the very least just so I can have a reflex associated with a task.
The big reason I like to have the hatches separate is that it lets me only make drones where i need them. I tend to rally all the army units to a central place, but keep the drone rally point on the local minerals.
There are definite advantages to having them all on the same hotkey though - it lets you spawn units at all the hatches at the same time.
The big reason I like to have the hatches separate is that it lets me only make drones where i need them. I tend to rally all the army units to a central place, but keep the drone rally point on the local minerals.
There are definite advantages to having them all on the same hotkey though - it lets you spawn units at all the hatches at the same time.
Yeah, I will say that rally points can be a PITA with everything on one hotkey. I'll carefully rally each town hall to nearby minerals, and then ctrl-click production groups to rally to a staging area.
And then, in the middle of some nasty fight, I'll accidentally hit the production hotkey and right-click rally everything into the middle of the fight and not notice until I see a stream of SCVs wandering into the battle. Doh.
That happens to me too, I'll hit 1 to queue up some more SCVs, and then I'll go back to whatever units I have out in the field, and next thing you know I've got SCVs going all over the place, and I have to stop and get them back to mining! Huge waste of time whan that happens!
So I started playing multiplayer with Winfrey today. Found out I suck. But I'm definitely learning.
I'm trying to get my hotkeys standardized.
I've been playing terran, and I have a lot of trouble with early attacks. I can see lots of inefficiencies in my early builds, (like building my barracks a little late, missing the SCV by a couple seconds) but are there any solid starting strategies I can build on?
the best way to get familiar with the hotkeys is to play with the grid hotkeys. they are the same for every race and they also are consistent across all the buildings and units.
i saw your party invite CF, but i was about to join a ladder game, so maybe a game tomorrow?
First of all, Cannon you do not suck. We lost to a couple well timed early rushes, and expertly micro-ed reapers. With some adjustments to a build you can beat all of those. Any of the games we took to the later stages we absolutely crushed our opponents. So apparently we can macro pretty well. There are lots of ways to improve. One way that helped me was to watch some game-casts of pro level players. HDStarcraft and Husky do a lot of that.
If you want more in depth, more "how do I know if what I am doing is good" type of information you can go watch Day[9]'s Dailies. This episode is pretty good for figuring out inefficiencies in a build so that you can smooth it out and get going faster. Day[9] likes to talk a lot though so expect the show to last around an hour.
Comments
ctrl-clicking on a unit will select all units of that type, which is pretty close
So Air units as Group 2 and ground units as Group 3. So that when in battle you can just click 2 and then attack on an air unit.
Just an example.
It does help to do things like group all production buildings and cycle through kicking off unit builds, and to fire off ghost EMP and marine stimpacks in a mixed army.
Double clicking a unit also serves this function.
If you had a special group, like 10 banshees for example, highlight them and hit control + 3 or whatever number. If you add more banshees later you have to re-highlight all of them and redo control + whatever number.
Double clicking works and I do it, but if the things are moving around it's very hard to double click one and get the whole group highlighted.
Yes, it is very good to have a billion hotkeys for every unit combination you might possibly need to select, but if you make it more confusing, you are only hurting yourself. You also can only have a certain number of hotkeys, so hotkeying each unit is not effective. You need to be used to having all of your units hotkeyed or separated into groups in order to effectively micro units. You should have your production buildings each on their own hotkey (pretty normal to have your econ/main building on 1, production building type A on 2, type B on 3, etc.) so you can macro without looking at your base all the time.
To conserve hotkeys, I've been doing pretty well with *all* my production buildings (including command centers) in one group, usually 4 because it's easy to hit.
I can tab through the building groups and fire off production super fast. For example with 2 CC's, 2 rax, 1 fact, 3 starports, I can do 4ss<tab>(tab)daa(tab)<tab>s(tab)<tab>eee. That gets SCVs, marines, a marauder, a tank, and banshees going in a second or so.
Beyond that, I tend to use 1-3 for active battle groups. Groups 5-8 are devoted to individual command centers or other points of interest on the map, so I can double-tap the group to jump to that base.</tab></tab></tab>
You can also put your tech labs/evo chambers/forge/cycore on hotkeys so you can tell easily if an upgrade is done.
Hotkey designation is definitely one of the areas I need to standardize at some point. At the very least just so I can have a reflex associated with a task.
There are definite advantages to having them all on the same hotkey though - it lets you spawn units at all the hatches at the same time.
Yeah, I will say that rally points can be a PITA with everything on one hotkey. I'll carefully rally each town hall to nearby minerals, and then ctrl-click production groups to rally to a staging area.
And then, in the middle of some nasty fight, I'll accidentally hit the production hotkey and right-click rally everything into the middle of the fight and not notice until I see a stream of SCVs wandering into the battle. Doh.
I'm trying to get my hotkeys standardized.
I've been playing terran, and I have a lot of trouble with early attacks. I can see lots of inefficiencies in my early builds, (like building my barracks a little late, missing the SCV by a couple seconds) but are there any solid starting strategies I can build on?
i saw your party invite CF, but i was about to join a ladder game, so maybe a game tomorrow?
If you want more in depth, more "how do I know if what I am doing is good" type of information you can go watch Day[9]'s Dailies. This episode is pretty good for figuring out inefficiencies in a build so that you can smooth it out and get going faster. Day[9] likes to talk a lot though so expect the show to last around an hour.