Starcraft 2

[Geoffrey Taucer]

How do you hotkey your queens and hatcheries? All queens and all hatches, or individual hatches and queens, or what? That's the biggest thing I've been trying to figure out.

With Terran, it's easy: hotkey the CCs, rax, facts, ports, ebays, and armories, and the rest is army.

[Necrotic]

How do you hotkey your queens and hatcheries? All queens and all hatches, or individual hatches and queens, or what? That's the biggest thing I've been trying to figure out.

With Terran, it's easy: hotkey the CCs, rax, facts, ports, ebays, and armories, and the rest is army.

Most zergs I know of go all hatches on one hotkey (many set it to 4, some to 5) and the rest as individual queens (so like 5+ might be individual queens). The benefit of this setup is that it's easy to keep up on your vomits, and all you have to do to check a base is double tap the queen hotkey. You can vomit from the minimap as well, and if you want to cut down on micromanagement doing it through that method you could have all your queens on one hotkey as well.

When I play zerg I go 1-3 army, 4 all queens on bases, 5 hatches, 5-9 individual queens at bases, 0 upgrade buildings or a 4th queen depending. I'm sure some higher level zerg players will have some better advice too (b/c my main is 'Toss). If I'm on more bases I may shift my hotkey setup a bit as well.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

So when you say 1-3 for army, is there a standard setup you typically use?

Here's my usualy hotkey setup with Terran:

1: all CCs

2: all rax

3: all facts

4: all ports

5: whole army (minus any drops, scouts, or other such small forces I have out on the map)

6: tanks

7: either vikings, ghosts, or ravens

8: scouts/drops/other small groups

9: ebays

0: armories

Though if I switch to zerg, I'd rather retrain myself to keep armies on 1-4.

[Necrotic]

So when you say 1-3 for army, is there a standard setup you typically use?

Not really any sort of rigid setup, I have kind of a rough guideline in my head of how I want to be using my hotkeys though. Mostly depends on the build I've gone and stage of the game, even if I'm playing Protoss. In the early-mid game 1 might be my whole army (let's saying I'm going lings) and 2-3 might be a couple of scouts. Or maybe I'll divide two groups of the same army as 1 and 2 for better positioning. Another thing is having melee on 1 and ranged on 2 (Roach/Ling). Or maybe I'll just have the whole bulk of them on 1 because the composition I've gone isn't that micro intensive. In the mid-late game, I usually reserve them for individual unit types. 1 might be my bulk army and 2-3 might be my flying or casting units or some variation like that (btw brofestors are amazing bro). You're going to find as Zerg that they're more reactionary, and that you're probably going to have a different composition of units for every matchup so you'll have to get comfy with your army hotkey setups changing depending on the context of the game.

[Koriantor]

Though if I switch to zerg, I'd rather retrain myself to keep armies on 1-4.

Your current setup could do just as well for zerg. Have 1 be your hatches, and then your queens as 2-4. That might get dicey if you get more than 3 expos though. When I play zerg, I usually have all of my hatches on 0 and I had until this point had individual hatches on 5-9, but uh... now that you guys mention it, it'd make more sense to use them for queens .

As for the 1-3 for armies, that's what I usually do for Terran but I don't think it really matters though. That's just what seemed most logical to me when I started playing and now it's just muscle memory. Use whatever your most comfortable with.

EDIT:

Also, it seems that I'm still in platinum league

High Five! Yeah platinum!

[Secret Agent Man]

Just played my season 3 placement match. Goal this season: Bonus pool of 0 (it was nearing 900). I remain silver. Give it a watch!

[Omega]

My usual set-up is 1-3 for armies, 4-7 for queens and 8-0 for hatcheries.

number 1 I commonly preserve for the scouting drone and once it has done its job, I switch the hotkey for harassing units such as speedling, mutas or infestors.

Bear in mind that the numbers 8 to 0 are ALL key'd for same hatcheries, ALL of the hatcheries. There's no sense to select them one-by-one to produce units from them.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

My usual set-up is 1-3 for armies, 4-7 for queens and 8-0 for hatcheries.

number 1 I commonly preserve for the scouting drone and once it has done its job, I switch the hotkey for harassing units such as speedling, mutas or infestors.

Bear in mind that the numbers 8 to 0 are ALL key'd for same hatcheries, ALL of the hatcheries. There's no sense to select them one-by-one to produce units from them.

I have a different openning hotkey setup -- CC on 1, SCV building my first depot/rax on 4, scouting scv on 3.

[Omega]

SCV building my first depot/rax on 4

interesssting... Tell me, how do you feel about drone harassing your SCV that is building the rracks?

[Koriantor]

It... Look, my SCV is doing it's own thing when some thing comes and <shudder>. The poor SCV tries to get away and do it's job but the harassment just doesn't stop. Eventually the SCV just can't take it anymore and blows up, leaving behind a huge mess and a dang unfinished building.

Drone harass is evil.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

interesssting... Tell me, how do you feel about drone harassing your SCV that is building the rracks?

I fucking hate drone/probe harassment more than any other tactic. Yes, even cannon rushing.

[Omega]

In that case you don't want to play against me. I've been practising two drone harassment that will delay the rracks and therefore the whole wall-in long enough for my zerglins to hit the mineral line. It doesn't always work, but it will deal significant damage either to mining time or delay any build the opponent might be planning. Plus it all new way of trolling. Considering that the initial investment is just two drones, it's often well worth the risk.

I don't do it all the time though, because I enjoy longer games.

[Koriantor]

Starcraft 2 now has an "Unlimited Trial Mode". I haven't tried it out, but from what Blizzard says, it has the first 4 single player maps, 2 challenges, and they can play multiplayer as terran in custom games on 4 maps.

So for any of the bums that hasn't played SC2 yet, there's no excuse.

[JadeAuto]

I finally can play online. Going random just to learn.

Question, should I play the practice league at all or just skip it?

[Necrotic]

I finally can play online. Going random just to learn.

Question, should I play the practice league at all or just skip it?

Practice league will actually probably put you in some really bad habits. I'd say skip.

[Omega]

I finally can play online. Going random just to learn.

Question, should I play the practice league at all or just skip it?

If you know at least two build orders, yes you can skip it.

If you know what building does what, yes you can skip it.

If you are confident enough that you can take some cheese sometimes without throwing a ragequits, yes you can skip it.

[Nabeel Ansari]

Some trial. Only lets me fight an A.I. on easy mode.

[Secret Agent Man]

I also recommend skipping practice mode and jumping right into league play. It really isn't that bad, especially at the lower levels, and you can learn just as much (if not more) than you could in practice league.

[Necrotic]

Mainly the problem with practice league is the fact that the maps include rocks outside of your base which gives an illusion of safety but in actuality it just makes massing air units retardedly good. Actual games of SC2 are nothing like that.

By jumping straight into your placement matches, if you don't know how to play you'll get placed in a low league and then you start to learn the fundamentals from there.

[linkspast]

Some trial. Only lets me fight an A.I. on easy mode.

Quit whining, its free.

If you like RTS games then just buy it.

$60 bucks is not much for a game that will likely be around for a decade. if you play it for a decade, that's $.50 a month (not including the expansions.

[Vivi22]

Mainly the problem with practice league is the fact that the maps include rocks outside of your base which gives an illusion of safety but in actuality it just makes massing air units retardedly good. Actual games of SC2 are nothing like that.

Not to mention that if you're a Protoss or Terran player it's pretty easy to wall off early on. Terran especially being really good at it since depots can submerge to get out of the way. So yeah, definitely don't bother with practice league.

[Nabeel Ansari]

Quit whining, its free.

If you like RTS games then just buy it.

$60 bucks is not much for a game that will likely be around for a decade. if you play it for a decade, that's $.50 a month (not including the expansions.

Who said I wasn't gonna buy it?

[HalcyonSpirit]

I finally can play online. Going random just to learn.

Question, should I play the practice league at all or just skip it?

Definitely just skip the practice league. As was already mentioned, the surplus of rocks blocking entrances just completely changes the nature of the match. All it'll do it just teach you bad habits that'll need to be broken in order to learn the true fundamentals.

Also, if you want someone to play against, I'd be game. I've been meaning to get back into playing after not touching the game since last year, so hit me up if you're interested.

[Koriantor]

Some trial. Only lets me fight an A.I. on easy mode.

If you have any friends with SC2 they can make a game and invite you and they can up the difficulty. You can still only play on the few maps you've got and you can only play terran, but they can up the difficulty for you.

[Nabeel Ansari]

If you have any friends with SC2 they can make a game and invite you and they can up the difficulty. You can still only play on the few maps you've got and you can only play terran, but they can up the difficulty for you.

Good idea! Thanks!