1. Change “Return Resources” ability of workers to “Continue Working”.
All races must pull workers for various reasons, this change would lessen the APM required to put a base back to mining. Currently, you can tell a worker who is carrying minerals or gas to return them to a base, and afterwards they’ll continue working, this change would extend that to workers that don’t have minerals or gas.
After clearing a base, pressing “C” with standard hotkeys would tell workers to continue mining the same mineral patch or geyser they were last assigned to.
Pros can do this in 1 second by shift-clicking 3 to each geyser, and then the rest to minerals. Everyone else, this is a lot of clicks.
The “Continue Working” hotkey would not necessarily be a better way to re-saturate a base, because if gas-mining workers were destroyed, those geysers would need to be manually replaced.
2. Add default control groups to production structures / unit types.
Encourage lower-skill players to use control groups. Implementations could vary, but here’s a few ideas:
a. Set-in-game method: With barracks or warpgates selected, shift+alt+Number would have all units produced by the selected structures assigned to the control group on that number. This is difficult for Zerg, as both military and workers are produced from the hatch. Maybe this could only affect military, or it could be set by the cocoons per-unit type.
b. Pre-set in keybindings: each unit and structure gets an option to be automatically assigned to a control group on creation. Bases automatically on 4 or 5 / main army on 1/2, spellcasters on 3, etc – however you choose to configure it.
This isn’t a complete replacement for hotkeying units – it does not account for splitting your army.
tldr:
1 - After clearing workers from a base, pressing “C” with standard hotkeys would tell workers to go back to mining the same mineral patch or geyser they were last assigned to.
2 - Auto-control groups configurable for units/structures. Always want your spellcasters on 3? Done.
I’m D1 random; hopefully everyone can get behind these changes. Love to hear your thoughts!