Need help with using Queens!

Zerg Discussion
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So the way i normally use queens is just keeping 1 at a hatchery the whole time. This works fine for injecting. But what i see higher tier players doing a lot is defending with Queens. How do they do that? Do they just bring all their queens from wherever they are and help defend an attack? Also then you start losing on injects no? And lets say they successfully defend an attack, do you then select each individual queen and send them to a hatchery? This sounds complicated to me honestly and am not sure how others do it. I am currently in gold and feel like my Queen game is lacking.

Thank you

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Making more queens, with about 6-8 queens in any given game, will probably get you to platinum. No joke. What most people do is have inject queens on a separate hotkey from defense queens. This allows you to save up energy on defense queens while nor missing injects. The defense queens will also be useful for creep spreading.

And realistically, they are an amazing mineral dump early to mid game. Nobody below pro ever lost a game from making too many queens.

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Also, if your hatch queens are on a hotkey, backspace will cycle through all finished hatcheries. You can also rebind it to spacebar so you can literally perform all injects with one hand. A bit of practice with the shift key and spacebar and you can inject all hatches in less than a second.

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Hi Maniac. I’m new to SC2 and just learning the basics. I can inject but I’m still doing it using the mouse after a week of gameplay. Can you explain how to do it with keyboard only, so I can do it faster?

Thanks brother

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Hello,

here is how I am doing it :

  1. Each time I create a queen I select it and I add it to a control group : shift+5
  2. I create a lot of queens (unless I rush the tier 2 for a cheese). My understanding, is this general rule : going tier 2 before 5mn is a cheese if you are against Terran or Protoss. So I produce bunch of queens for about 4mn (priority are drones, and 3rd hatch). Everything depends on the situation, so do not apply this rule blindly.
  3. When attack occurs, I just push 5 + A and click (and bit of micro if needed). If it is a 5mn push, I try not to forget to go to tier 2 during the fight and other macro stuff. If fight takes time and mineral is floating, I produce more queens at least on B2 and B3 for injection.
  4. When attack is finished type 5, then I press the inject button. While I hold shift and I use camera base button (default is backspace but I reblinded it to space) to switch for one base to another and click on each of them. I do the camera base + click as many time as I have base. Then release shift. If you have do not have enough queens with the required energy. the move will not work. The easiest way is to use the steal move : push five, then back space, right click next to the hatch, shift + right click on one the queens in the control group display (down middle of the screen), then back space right click next to the hatch and shift right click on one the queens in the control group display, … Once you have done that for each hatch, you will end up with some queens you can send for creep spreading.

note : I am not always using camera base, as I use the F1,F2,F3, F4 camera settings to access the desired position. I told about the camera base because it is easier and works even if you have macro hatches.

I hope this explanation is clear.

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Sure thing, and welcome to the swarm!
So if you can go into options under hotkeys, you can switch from the standard hotkey setup to grid. This switches every unit command hotkey to the 16 keys immediately under your left hand. In the same menu you can find the camera hotkey for your bases and switch it from backspace to spacebar. Spacebar is technically your last notification hotkey, but i don’t use it so its currently unbound (unusable).
Now every unit command will be determined by its position In the command window and which key it correlates with on your keyboard. No more stretching across the board with your left hand. Makes everything easier.
For injecting with queens, you will select your hotkey for inject queens.(i put them on 2 next to my hatchery hotkey to help remember and speed up injects while also making units). So to run this method you select queens, hold shift while selecting x for injects, then hit space with your thumb while holding shift and x. Spacebar will center on each hatchery consecutively as you hit spacebar, click on each hatchery add it comes up.
I feel like it may be easier to show or watch, so you may want to YouTube the “backspace inject method” as its called. Or i can show you later. Just message me later or I’ll check back here

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Wow that was a lot to type on a smartphone

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3 inject queens for your first 3 bases and then 4-6 queens at the front for defending and spreading creep. I keep my creep queens on 0 (rebound to y) so that I can get all of them if needed and then the 3 inject queens on 6-8. I only pull the inject queens if I absolutely need them to defend. otherwise they just chill at my bases.

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  1. When you inject and then build a queen immidiatly, you won’t loose time with your injects.
    –> Have a control group for your creep queens and when you need queens, you jump from base to base to injects and each time you inject, you add the queen to your creep queen control group.
    You can a-move your queens via minimap and then jump to the fight to micro (connecting your bases with creep in the early game is really, really important so remember to make a toumor with your queen at your natural when she spawns.)
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you can send 2 per base same way you send 3 drones to an extractor after selecting all drones