ITT: Ctrl groups and hotkeys (learning to macro while you micro)

On Thur, Sep 30, at 11:53 AM eian wrote:

Today's lesson: CTRL GROUPS HOTKEYS 1) hotkeys/ctrl groups: the bread and butter of RTS. Not using them is like playing halo without ever using grenades, jumping, scoping, crouching, etc. Sure you can get through the game by just point and shooting, but it really limits your ability. This took me a while to pick up but my best advice is to work on the single player "challenges." You simply can't get gold without hotkeys. There are 2 main ways to incorporate them:

• A) hotkeying your base: your command center should always be a ctrl group. You should never have to "click" on your base buildings...ever (you'll get there eventually). Your production buildings should all be on another hotkey, then all your tech buildings on a 3rd. This is how players are able to continue to "macro" (pump out men) even when they are off fighting with their armies. EXAMPLE: I assign my command center (CC) to #4 (click ComCenter, CTRL 4 or SHIFT 4). I have 2 barracks (rax) and a factory: double click one rax (to select all like buildings) hold SHIFT and select factory then press 5 (all are now group 5). Next I click engineering bay and the 2 tech labs hanging on my rax and assign them to group 6. Now I have my whole base hotkeyed and am ready to pump shit out. I press 4 s (start an SCV at my CC), press 5 d a (trains a marauder and a marine: one at each rax), press TAB to select the factory that is in that group then s to train a siegetank. Now I want to research stim but I'm in the middle of the map with my army. Instead of clicking back on my base, I just press 6 (my tech buildings) then TAB to get to my tech labs and either select the upgrade or use the hotkey. Since I have 2 techlabs if I select both stim and combat shields, each will be researched at separate lab. There was a simple way I finally got "decent" at contrl groups and that was by playing the single player challenge called: "opening gambit." It's a terran challenge where you have to train 30 marines, 8 tanks and 8 ghosts in short order. It's the perfect tool for learning base ctrl groups and hotkeys. (The other exercises will help with army ctrl groups)

Now let's say the game if progressing and you've built your second CC, 2 starports, and 2 more rax. The most efficient way to add them to your ctrl groups is using SHIFT. EXAMPLE cont: select your 2nd CC and pres shift 4 and it's added to that group. Lets say you've turned them both into OC (orbital commands) and just landed that 2nd puppy at a juicy gold mine. if you spam the E button (MULE) you can call down a bunch of harvesters to quickly rape that gold! It's a nasty Terran trick. Now on those 2 rax that are still being constructed, double click one (to select both if they're on the screen together) and press shift 5. If you let go and press 5 again (to call up group 5) you'll notice all your military buildings and in the front will be the 2 completed rax but the next 2 will be red, then yellow to green as they get constructed...this is a good way of monitoring how things are going so you can time your mineral expenditures (i.e. I know my 3/4 rax will be completed soon so instead of queuing too many marines in the first 2 rax I'll wait a sec and have them queued at all four).

pro tip: tapping the group number twice will take you (the screen) to that location. i.e. Instead of looking down on minimap and clicking on your base, just tap 4 4. This is especially handy if say your army is assigned to group 1. Just hit 1 1 to find them.

• B) hotkeying your army: the same concept as above applies to your military. If you double click one marine, all of them get selected (you can also hold ctrl and select a marine to select all, useful when selecting faster/moving units). I prefer shift ctrl because you can continue holding shift and select the group number to assign them to. Remember that SHIFT "adds" them to the group but CTRL overwrites the group. Let's say you accidentally assign a building to your army group (I do this a lot for some reason with warpgates). If you reselect your army and press ctrl # it will overwrite the old assignment. (Or, hold shift and click building icons to remove them from the group selection before pressing ctrl to reassign). When new units spawn, select them and hold shift # to add them to the group. If you have mixed units in your army that have different "abilities/spells" you will have to press TAB to switch between them (just like you have to TAB among different production buildings).

EXAMPLE: you have 1 ctrl group or marines/marauders/tanks. You want to send them off to attack and you want the tanks to SIEGE and the rest to STIM. Press 1 1 to locate the army, now that they are selected press A (attack move) and click the destination on your minimap. As soon as you see an enemy press T (stim) TAB (to highlight tanks) and press E (siege). It's beautifully simple. Now you have all this free time to micro the units. Pull your medivacs to the back, focus fire a colossus, etc. If you need to stim again press T and to unsiege press D.

pro tip: you can queue abilities just like you queue buildings. EXAMPLE: there is an overhang you want to place your siege tanks on, but its a distance away and we know how slow tanks move when you want to get them into position. Select your tanks (hit CTRL and select one OR double click one, or call on your tank ctrl group) then right click the position you want to go to and hold SHIFT E and they will get into siege mode as soon as they arrive. This gives you the freedom to select your ground army of marines to start attack moving ahead to scout or around the cliff to give the tanks more sight. You could also queue a nuke this way, land a bunch of vikings in someones base, or queue your medivacs to drop marines somewhere...all important shit you don't want to have to wait around and watch.

So that's probably more than enough of info and I know you're busy. However if you've read this far and still fee overwhelmed (i wouldn't blame ya) just take 20 mins to go through the tutorial and then re-read this email. If you have time to get online I suggest practicing the "opening gambit" so you can come up with comfortable control groups for your base and army. (expand after the first attack and build a bunker down there).

good luck soldier.

PS: Newbie mistake #432: always ATTACK move instead of right-clicking. If you right-click they will not fire back and always get killed. PPS: A rally point is treated like a right-click so if you rally far away your units will keep running thru the enemy and get killed without firing.

on Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 11:22 AM eian wrote

Pat - I've noticed you've improved at spending your resources and keeping your balance low, but instead of investing in early tech try to just keep your barracks and factory running. upgrades aren't necessary until you have put down your expansion...so next time you play try a few games without building an engineering bay and instead just pump out a ton of men. In the early-mid game of starcraft, it's a numbers game, not a power issue. This took me a while to learn but it's such a crucial lesson that I hope you'll pick up on it soon.

After each game, at least check the "graph" in the score report and see what your army value was compared to everyone else...then you'll start to see things like "i must be a little late producing my first army" or "there was a period in the middle where I plateaued" and you'll realize things like "oh I was out harassing with my reapers and forgot to keep training men" or "I was expanding and forgot to keep training men." Those are macro/micro conflicts that take practice so just give them time, but the most avoidable situation is "I was teching and upgrading and forgot to train more men." You never want to find yourself in this situation. Consider the early game a race of who can produce the MOST men, not the POWERFUL men. Once you're comfortable with "producing large armies" we can move onto considering what kind of units to produce..but for now just work on training anything you can as fast as you can (starting with your barracks troops and then factory units...slowly moving up the tech tree)

Remember there are a lot of videos out there (day[9]) or forums (Teamliquid, reddit)