Learning your hotkeys is critical to become a fast comm. I still don't know most of mine, but being new to this comming thing, I think I can lecture with the wisdom of someone who's just learned himself. These are the important keys.
NOTE: These are the default hotkeys! This is the guide for those who just want to use the defaults and not change them!

Most Important: Meds and ammo
E-A for ammo E-S for meds. You have to hit E once (switches it to the menu), and then you can just hit A and S.

Important Structures: rt and pg
Q-A for res tower (because you want to quickly get them up so your marines can move on/not get eaten while waiting, and because you drop so many of them)

W-F (F for phase! fase! clever huh?) Hive rushes really rely on speed. Getting that phase to your ninja asap is important.

Command Groups: Observatory and Arms Lab
I hope you're familiar with command groups, because I couldn't come up with a good, short explaination.

*EDIT* It's not CTRL, it's your crouch key, which is by default CTRL. (I use f for crouch, but CTRL is still bound to it so it works)
CTRL-1: stores whatever you're selecting to the 1 key (non number pad). So if you have observatory selected and hit CTRL-1, now each time you hit 1 you'll select the observatory, without having to move your screen back to base - good for sweeps, upgrades, and beacons.

1-A: if you have the obs stored to 1, this will give you a quick scanner sweep. It makes it much easier to check up on hives/spot for seiges/etc

1-Z: Distress Beacon. A fast beacon enhances your speed on hive rushes where every second counts.

CTRL-2: same as CTRL-1, I use 2 for the arms lab. I check up on it regularly to see if my upgrades are done. Just makes things easier for a busy comm.

These are the essential hotkeys! I hope these will help get you over the comming hump!

Bacon is Z, and note that the hotkeys are adjustable in Options -> Multiplayer -> Advanced.

Default is "qwerasdfzxcv", and moving the hotkeys one to the right would be "wertsdfgxcvb".

trivial though essential

Oops forgot to mention that hotkeys are adjustable. I use the defaults because I honestly couldn't come up with anything better myself. A lot of them make sense - A for Ammo, F for PHase gate. And they're arranged to mirror the menus. I considered trying to make them starcraft-esque (B for build, V for advanced structures, etc), but then realized that multiple commands are tied to one key so it wouldn't work.

And Lofung, that's exactly my reason for posting Nobody was there to tell me these things and I'd like to help those new comms get over the hump.

The key to assaign squads is not allways Ctrl. It's allways the key you binded crouch to So it's "crouch + number".
And hotkeys are not just for a few buildings, in the end you will use them for everything you drop. Get used to it as quick as you can and you gonna be a fast comm ^^

Oh and allways get your whole team to squad5! it's the winning squad and it sounds cool too :>

Yes I also like to put all on pub to squad five sometimes you can even hear "yay im sqd5 I pwn" or similiar. And for those meds and ammo make sure that you press first the E or you will land arms lab or similiar, that`s quite not good when your trying to rush the hive when your silly rines start to build al next to the hive....


and for the group mariking thing! GJ I learned again something new, last time must be few months ago...

Use Right Click to cancel


To prevent dropping that Armslab in the hive room by mistake

Select all is also a good key to have. i've got it on my mouse so i can keep every marine selected whenever possible and see thier hp.

Nothing nicer than godmode (with medspam) and knifing every single skulk that is so stupid to run into you