Mnemonics to remember Starcraft 2 Building Hotkeys
I switched to the Grid keyboard layout (through the game settings) and now simply use positioning instead of memorising letters. Since that's what I used to use for my WoW UI (back in the day :D), it came more naturally to me than predefined key-letters, even though I've played my fair share of StarCraft 1.
So, Build Hatchery is Z Q
Pool is Z A
"MOAR HYDRAS NAO OMG" is 1 Q S S S S S S S S S S S S (hatchery on control group 1)
and so on..
There's a simple one thanks to Blizzard:
Farms and* production buildings are always the first letter in their name.
The more important the building/unit, the more likely it is to be the first letter in the name. Because of how often those buildings are built, Blizzard gave them more priority when resolving first letter conflicts.
So you can be sure of:
Terran
- C - Command Center
- B - Barracks
- S - Supply Depot
- F - Factory
- S - Starport
Protoss
- N - Nexus
- G - Gateway
- E* - Pylon*
- S - Stargate
- R - Robotics Facility
Zerg
- H - Hatchery
(I don't know what's up with Zerg in SC2 yet, so I don't know what happened to creep colonies? All of these hotkeys were recycled from SC1, which I have plenty of experience with.:) )
If you're after a building that's not important, its still worth trying the first letter, and probably the second, but a few are just going to come down to rote memorization.
*Farms currently disputed. See comments.