Star Blog #16

Ahhhh doooood your keys are soo hawt!

Hot keys.  Man so usefull - but a learning curve for sure and it can get confusing.  First I'll start with a confession.....at first I didn't use hot keys.  I was just clicking everything with my mouse and doing it that way.   Probably a lot of people start that way.  Then after I found out about hot keys I started using them all the time.  Last night was the first time I ever used W for my warp gates lol  I had been setting 3 to my hot key for my warp gates not knowing that W was already by default bound for all your Gate Way's when you are Protoss.

How do you hot key?

This part is pretty easy I guess.  You just hold CTRL and then press a number to bind that unit / building / army to that key.  For example I use 1 for Nexus(s).  So at the start of the game I hold CTRL and Press 1 with my Nexus selected.  If I expand and build another Nexuses I can press SHIFT 1 with that Nexus selected and it will add that Nexus to my control group.  To be honest most of the time I don't use CTRL at all - I usually just use SHIFT even when I bind my first object to that control group.

In the example above if I press the 1 key no matter where I am on the map it will select my Nexus(s).  I can see what they are doing, I can select C for Chronoboost, I can press E to queue up a Probe to be built.  All without having to go look at my Nexus.  You can be in the biggest firefight of your life and still be mainting your base production.  How hot is that!  Now apply that to say my 4 key which I use for my Stargates.   If I press 4 and then Y I can set my rally point for my Stargates to be the current battle I am in.  Then 4 V V V  which will que up 3 Voidrays for me rallied to come to the battle I'm in all the way across the map.  If I have 3 stargates in that control group each one would start building a Void Ray.  If I only had 1 Startgate in that group then those 3 Void Rays would be all queued up in that Stargate.

If in the example above I have my Nexus hotkeyed to 1 and I am all the way across the map but I want to go back and buld a new structure I can just press 1 1 instead of just press 1 once and that will zip me all the way back to my Nexus.  I can build my building and some pylons and then press 5 5 (5 is usually my main army) and I will zip all the way back to my army.

What do I hot key?

I hot key my Nexus for Chornoboost and for probe production.  

I hot key my scout probe.

I hot key my buildings (most of the time releated buildings all on a single key)

I hot key my "main" army

My Gateways are default bound to W which I'm going to start using :)

Pretty much that's all I've taught myself how to get used to so far.  Eventually maybe I'll have a 2nd army or drop ship or something hotkeyed as my play becomes a little more advanced.  But with that kind of setup you can continue building your army from across the map, you can keep building your production and military assests as you engage in combot or explore miles away - that's pretty powerful stuff right there :) and you can quickly zip back and forth between your bases and army etc. by double tapping the bound key.  Don't forget to use Y to set your rally points for your army production units.  You can press Y and then select a unit in your active army and the unit will go right into that army.  You will still have to SHIFT + army number key (5 for me) to add those new units to your control group but at least they will move right to your group without you having to do anything!

Goood games last night 2old2play.  I don't know how long the 2nd last game of the night that I played with you guys was....but it was a super long game lol