I'm sorry if this has been asked before, i had a search under hotkeys and control but couldn't find what i was after. maybe i missed it

when i see pro gamers play, it seems they have far too many units to just have hotkeyed. as a zerg player, even if i drop my 4 and 5 key from hatcheries, that leaves 5x12 = 60 units to control.

when i watch the zerg greats go end game, it seems like they have much more than that so i just want to know how they control huge armies? i'm asking specifically for zerg but i guess it applies to all 3 races

do they use more hotkeys? more mouse control? or am i missing something really obvious?

once again, sorry if this has been asked before


v7rus

i think pro gamers are just super fast nah, i don't really know, with T i just hotkey my main army with 1-5 and the rest goes for starports and scanns ... with Zerg its a bit harder since you have a ton of lings and stuff ... but yea i can't figure it out how the pro gamers go upside down with 6 control grps while they macro and do harassments at the same time ... but there is 1 thing i'm certain, they are 3 times faster than me

I have a feeling they use the F keys more for macro in the late game rather than the number keys. If my memory holds, they actually do a considerable amount of clicking on the minimap to get to hatcheries/gateways/factories/barracks/etc.

Yeah that makes sense. I have seen zerg players have clusters of hatcheries in their bases

wow, does that mean all the other keys are units?

how on earth can you do 1a2a3a4a5a6a7a8a9a0a fast enough? i guess that's why they are the pros. it's a miracle most of them don't have RSI or CTS!

When it comes to multiple large armies, I tend to combine a mix of units on each hotkey. After attack moving, I just focus on spell units. If I need to focus fire on something, I'd ctrl click my units to snipe. I don't think you can really expect to micro every unit to safety when you have 60+ of them. There will be blood ._.

don't at least zerg players use drag select for controlling at later stage?

My memory of using control or alt (one of those things) to hotkey up to 100 groups (if you want) is gone, but there is a way to hotkey many more than just 10 groups, and it involves the alt key in some way I believe.

wow, i never knew that ... but i'm a terran player so i don't think i'll ever have to use more than +10 control groups of units ...

I've never heard anything of this before, and all the hotkey schemes I've seen only account for 10 groups. Wouldn't it be a hack?

All progamers priarmily use hotkeys to control their armies. Actually, if you look at many of the Zerg progamer's hotkey schemes, they never use any hotkeys past 7. In reality, most of their units only go to hotkeys 1-5, but then again, their matches are much more fast paced than us lower level people, so they have less units to deal with anyway. But for us, I recommend using hotkeys up to 6 or so to control your forces. If you have a need for anything more than that, then you're doing something wrong as Zerg at least.

No it wasn't a hack, it was something that was a little hard to follow at first, and since I'm not zerg I really didn't care anyways.

oh yea, btw, how do u hotkey a location?

Hold shift and press f2-4

While we're on the subject, how do you hotkey your groups? I don't mean the buttons, I mean selecting them

I often has 3 hatcheries rallied to the same location. Let's say for example I've been making hydras and I have a bunch of them in one spot, say 24, and I want to put them in 2 groups. I ctrl click or drag over them and set the selected ones to hotkey 1. The problem now is the selected group are mixed up with the other group so I have to move the other army away before I can select the next group.

Is there a better way to do this?

Depends on the match up for me. If it's Protoss, I control click lurkers and group, and drag box everything else to group. I don't really like to control click anymore since for me, drag boxing just seems to be faster.

So after you control click the lurkers, how do you select the rest of the army without selecting the original lurker group?

Okay I see what you're talking about. I don't think there is a reverse selection shortcut like in photoshop or something. I'd say what you're doing by moving the first group and then selecting the other is justt fine. It's pretty much good practice to move your units into position the sooner you get them.

Yep, that's the kind of idea i was asking. sorry i didn't make that clearer

ok then, i'll have to stick with the select 12 from bunch -> move the group away -> select next 12 bunch policy

thanks for all the help everyone

You can see some pros do that at times, esp people grouping their zerglings

Ad there is jsut no other way I guess...

Don't forget doing Shift+Number adds units to your hoytkey group, which is how you refill your hotkeys, ie add marines and replinsh your anti muta group.

Oh and you just wanna move them fast and don't have to attack you can just 1click etc...instead of doing 1a2a3a because there will be less delay, but thats only in circumstances you know your flanking or w/e.

me thinks its alt+1 for example makes a grp

as a toss player i've never had enough units at once to have hotkeying issues. To me it just means ur not being aggressive enough.

And in pvz most of ur late game units should be archons hts or reavers so that kills alot of psi. Plus prolly 2-3 mining bases of probes.

Iono how zerg players do it since they have so many more units to deal with. I guess just insanely fast drag and attack with filers hotkeyed.

as a toss player i've never had enough units at once to have hotkeying issues. To me it just means ur not being aggressive enough.

And in pvz most of ur late game units should be archons hts or reavers so that kills alot of psi. Plus prolly 2-3 mining bases of probes.

Iono how zerg players do it since they have so many more units to deal with. I guess just insanely fast drag and attack with filers hotkeyed.

I use a strange mix that works for me, but only because I've gotten used to it in the past ten years.

Early game:
1 command center
2 barracks
5 scouting scv

Early/mid game:
1 scan
2 barracks
3 factory/rax
4 factory/rax
5 scouting scv / (probably a different scv because the first dies by this time)
6-0 army

late game:
1 scan
2 scan
3-0 army
and I change the scanner I'm using to a different command center if I run out of energy on one.