Basic Terran Keyboard Mechanics

Why are mechanics important?

BW is a pretty hard game mechanically. A lot of new players will struggle with just doing their basic tasks. In my opinion, it's really important to be able to do those tasks as efficiently and as easily as you can. BW offers you hotkeys for your commands, 10 unit control groups, and 3 camera hotkeys. Having a good setup will enable you to macro better, and by extension, give you more time to focus on control.

Is it a prerequisite to have good mechanics to be good at the game? No. You can get quite far with subpar mechanics via just build order and game knowledge. FBH has shown that you can hit S with Terran with under 150 APM. However, I do not think that there is a good reason to handicap yourself by ignoring mechanics.

I also hear things like "My fingers aren't fast" or "How do I increase my APM?". Having a good hotkey setup, practicing it, is by far the easiest way to increase your APM. This doesn't necessarily mean that your skill goes up though, but to some, big number makes people at least feel like they are improving. Personally I find it fun to optimize mechanics, so this is something I study.

I'll try my best to convey what I think is important in this guide, and try to separate out my personal preferences.

Additionally, you don't need to start by trying to adopt a system like what I have or any pros have right away; it is perfectly fine and recommended to build up to using all the control groups/camera groups. If you start off by doing 1 base builds, you won't have a use for all control groups, you should just adopt what you can currently handle. As you work up builds that require more complexity, that's when you can incorporate more hotkeys into your play.

Finally I should mention that changing hotkeys or control group + camera hotkey schemes is also easier than you think, so don't worry about getting it right or wrong, you can always change it later.

Hotkeys to Change:

Listed are what I have personally changed to. You should rebind to something that personally feels comfortable for you. In my case, pretty much all abilities are on R or T. Most important here is that you move stuff away from the right side of the keyboard so you don't end up looking down on your keyboard like a certain Dutch streamer.

Must change:
Tank Siege -> t
Tank Unsiege -> r
Lay mines -> t
Irradiate -> t
Patrol -> Q
Load Dropship/Bunker-> R
Unload dropship/bunker -> T

Highly recommended (Rebind these if you have trouble hitting m key):
Build marine -> a
Move command -> g (This forces you to rebind gather minerals)

Other commands worth considering:
Upgrades on right side of keyboard
Niche upgrades (Lockdown)
Build buildings which are right side of keyboard (bunker, sci facility, physics lab)
Scan
Lift/Land building
Cloak/Decloak

Personal preference:
Build Medic -> g (This forces a ghost hotkey rebind)
Build ghost -> c
Build vulture -> a

Camera Hotkeys and Control groups

These are all largely personal preference, but most high level terrans will at least do the following:
1. Reserve 3 control groups for army in early game
2. Reserve 4-6 hotkeys for production in mid game
3. Reserve at least 2 hotkeys for scanners, increasing as game progresses
4. Camera hotkey main and nat early-mid game
5. Have an easy way to access production buildings late game (either f key or double tap production building)
6. Light also recommends you put your most important units on 1 (Vessels, etc)

You can usually figure out what they do through a combination of looking at someone's replays and FPVOD, there are some Terrans in the community who know what they do. You should copy what you're comfortable with.

Camera hotkeys

You can set camera hotkeys via shift + F2/F3/F4, and the respective F2/F3/F4 number to recall them. Be careful not to hit F1(which brings up the help menu) or F5 (which shifts your graphics).

To center your camera group on a particular cc:
1. Center camera on the interested CC (Double tap hotkey)
2. Set camera hotkey
This is useful because you can click on one spot to build SCV or add comsat station (eg, F2 -> click -> s -> F3 -> click -> s)

By default all of your camera hotkeys are centered on your spawn. Note that on certain maps (notably dominator on 11 o clock spawn), your starting camera hotkeys won't be perfectly centered and you will need to reset them yourself.

My personal camera hotkeys:
Early-mid game:
F2 - Main CC
F3 - Rally
F4 - Natural CC

Mid late game (<5 production facilities)
F2 - Production
F3 - Rally
F4 - Natural CC

This allows for SCV production from F keys (CCs are also hotkeyed until 4 production facilities) through the mid game. I'd also recommend that you have a F key pointed at the nat always, which allows you to run SCVs to your nat easily when you get harassed.

Control Groups:

You can set control groups by pressing ctrl + #, where # is the number you want to set. You can recall by pressing the number that it is set to. You can add to an existing control group by pressing shift + #. Double tap the number to center your screen on the control group. You can set a control to up to 12 units, or a single building.

Highlight common units by control clicking (or double clicking, I do not recommend this unless if you have no keyboard). Shift control clicking will also add the same unit type as selected to your current selection.

My personal hotkeys:
Early-mid game:
1-3 Army
4-8 production (rax/facts/cc, sometimes armory/acad/shop, and sometimes temporary buildings like offensive bunkers and offensive ebays)
9-0 scan

Late game:
1-6 army
7-0 scan