No matter what you level at Starcraft II most can agree that good use of hotkeys is crucial in both developing and maintain skill. Having nimble and agile fingers on your keyboard allows you to perform as many actions as possible which has the potential of allowing you to do and control more things at once which in turn allows you to multitask better (with practice). Essentially, it could be argued that a high level of comfort with hotkeys is at the core of becoming a good Starcraft II player.

As with all of my articles, this one is geared toward newer and lesser experienced players to the game. So what are hotkeys? Hotkeys are shortcuts which allow you quicker access to specified tasks in the game. They are essentially the SC2 version of things like “ctrl+x” and “alt+F4”. Every unit and every structure and every command in the game has associated with it, a hotkey. This key allows you to perform a task without the time and effort of dragging the mouse across the screen and clicking the buttons each time.

If you are very new to SC2 and RTS games in general you may be asking, “what’s the big deal? Why do I need to be faster? I click just fine.” The simple answer to that is, if you are looking for a quick way to improve your gameplay, learn the hotkeys, if you generally don’t care and just play the game for the sheer enjoyment, play however you like, who am I to stop you! However, presumably since you’re reading this article you are interested in improving somewhat. It is at this point that we will begin to explore how hotkeys work and how you can use them efficiently to improve your game.

Let’s start with the basic unit hotkeys: how do you know what does what? You may have noticed the little litters in the upper right corner of each unit square in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. Those letters correspond with the unit hotkey. For example, say you have highlighted a Barracks, a quick glance at the Marine icon in the bottom right corner shows a latter “A,” therefore, pressing this key will begin the training of a Marine. This is true for all units of all races and with all structures.

﻿

This gets extended to things beyond the creation of units. Sending a Probe to build a Nexus, for example, can be done by highlighting the probe, pressing “B” and then “N.” This saves a significant amount of time and significantly reduces the chance of a “misclick”. This is a term which gets used a lot and is even applied to the incorrect usage of a certain hotkey and stems from the inaccuracy of using the mouse. When a player makes a mistake by building the wrong structure or training the incorrect unit, commentators will often say he “misclicked” when, in fact, it is more than likely that there was no clicking involved. Simply put, the usage of hotkeys does not eliminate human error but certainly serves to reduce it.

Control groups: Control groups are another type of hotkey which are not as immediately straight forward as creation hotkeys. These do not show up and allow you to simply allow you to press a corresponding button. Control groups are the most efficient way of micromanaging your army and various structures in your base. They should be the core to allowing you to play smoothly and well. Control groups are at the very heart of your Starcraft II skill and something you should work very hard at developing your own system for using.

To create a control group, simply select any number of units or structures. Once that is done, hold the control button (CTRL) and press any number, 1-0, for example “ctrl+1” will create a control group which corresponds to the number 1. Each time you press the number 1 after doing this, you will automatically select the units or structures you have assigned to this control group. A rather ingenious creation, something us Warcraft II players never even dreamed of!

So now what? You’ve created your control group but how does that help you? Well, it’s simple really. Having these groups allows you immediate access to any crucial area of your game whether it be your army, base, upgrade facilities etc. While it may be tempting to simply put your entire army on one control group (namely #1) which leads to “1A Syndrome”, I would strongly recommend avoiding this pitfall. Many new players do this as a simple means of getting their entire army into a battle quite quickly, except this can cause many problems! If you have your entire army on one control group, specific units you want in certain locations may not be there because every unit has a different movement speed! Furthermore, it may be difficult to access the correct spell you want from one of your spell casters. It is for this reason that I strongly urge new players to try and develop a hotkey system that works for them.

What follows is the general guideline I use for hotkeys in my play. My main race is Protoss so although the units may differ for you, depending on race, the principle remains:

1: melee or Gateway units (Zealots, Stalkers etc)

2: High Templar

3: Immortals or Colossus or Phoenix (depending on openings)

4: Nexus (all)

5: Robo Facility

6: Stargate

7: Observer (at least one)

8: Observers or other structures or anything I have a use for in the particular game

9: Warp Prism

0: Mothership Core

Obviously, this exact layout will change from game to game and is rarely ever exactly the same. There are games where I have 4 army hotkeys, one thing that does remain constant for me though is that my Nexus is always on 4 and my Core is always on 0. Everything else kind of rotates.

Using control groups in this fashion can be extremely difficult when you begin, I certainly agree, but continued practice will allow you to move much quicker over the keyboard and be more accurate with your decisions. Appropriate use of hotkeys allows you to move faster, control more things simultaneously and feel generally in control (pun intended). For these reasons, I can not stress enough the importance of good hotkey use!

﻿

Some hotkey tips!

- Holding the SHIFT key and clicking on a unit will either add or remove it from a selection. Simply retap the hotkey combination to save your change.

- Holding the CTRL key and single clicking on any unit will select all of the same units within a certain radius. Double clicking a unit has this same effect.

- Pressing a hotkey twice in quick succession will immediately bring you to the current location of the units or structures on the hotkey.

- If you have multiple units of different types in the same control group, say a Zealot and a High Templar, pressing the TAB key will cycle through them.

- Backspace (by default) brings you back to your main base.