Hey everyone! Still on my journey of learning this complex game, I wanted to ask you all about control groups and your F2 key.
Watching pro games, reading forums, and playing with friends has taught me that the F2 key can be evil and control groups are a saving grace. Correct me if I’m wrong of course. So I had a few questions for the general population of players.
Do you all use the F2 key to control your army ever?
If so, what situations would you use F2 in?
If not, how do you effectively control your entire army with just control groups?
How many control groups do you use for your army, and how many for your structures?
Thank you for everyone that reads and responds to this post!
IMO you should avoid using F2 for ever issuing commands to your units. If you build a habit of issuing orders through F2 you will not be able to reliably keep spotters on the map, harassment units tucked behind opponents main, divide your forces effectively for defending multiple bases or setting up multi-pronged attacks. F2 can be useful for gathering stray units and dividing them up into control groups for a concerted push, but it’s better to add them to existing control groups when they are produced.
Control groups I use:
1: CC/Nexi/Hatcheries
2: Production Structures / Queens
3: Army Group 1
4: Army Group 2
5: Army Group 3
6: Special Group
7: Army Steal
0: Upgrades
F2 is not evil but better use that key for Camera Locations (F1, F2, F3, F4 and F5). Better control the army with CG (Control-Groups).
You can use nested CG (CG included in other CG).
Example:
1 Entire army
2. Melee units (Zealots, DT, Adepts, Archons - even if Adept-Archon are not strictly melee).
3. Stalkers
9 or ~ for the air army (Carriers, Voids, Tempests).
4- Templar, Disruptor (not part of 1 but following one of Immortals).
For Structures: only 7 and 8.
7: Nexi, Forges, Cybers and any structure with multiple upgrades (you can start upgrades without going back to base even before a battle in the field.
8: Robo and Stargates.
For Structures you have to use Tab to cycle between structures.
If you want to produce 2 Collo: 8 → C, C
If you want to produce 3 Carriers: 8 → Tab C, C, C
I rebinded F2 to “/” which is very far, I only ever use it to catch some “lost” units to put them in control groups, also to find something I need (like unbinded warp prism).
Usualy I have 2-3 groups. 1 is for main army chunk, 2 is for templar storms, 3 is warp prism. When if I turtle, 3 is 2nd chunk of armyto split defend. Then ofc production buildings have their own 6 binds on my mouse (gate, starport, robo, nexuses, sometimes forge/cyber, but I forget it most of the time and I don’t bother about these 2 too much since I can click them manualy every few minutes).
And I never use select all army to defend, it’s just bad.
But because I am very bad at build orders/macro - I am low league player so don’t take my advices to much
You can F2 a move in just about every situation except for those where your opponents are good enough to set up runbys and secondary forces for harass.
F1-F4: Camera hotkeys 1-8
1: Army
2: Multiprong or drop or liberator or raven/ghost
3: Drop or raven/ghost
4: Production
5: Town halls, ebays, armouries
6: Academy/fusion core
7: Anything else
8 and 9: Nothing
0: Army steal
