How do I increase APM?

[KeyBlue]

How big is your hand? (rhetorical)

How do you go from Q(reclaim) to O(overcharge) without looking at your keyboard?
Do you hover your hand over the keyboard like a piano player?

I put my hand at the standard QSDF (or ASDF) position for typing, so going to O would be quite a stretch.
Y is my comfort limit at the moment.

So a little explanation of how you do that (maybe a picture or short video) would be quite helpfull.

PS: after looking at it some more, i can see that the important stuff is close together, so maybe outliers aren't an issue as they are uncommon?

[Hawkei]

I've never really paid attention to what my hands are doing. I can touch time with a speed of about 120 words per minute. When typing the left and right index fingers will commonly sit on the F and J keys. With the other digits hovering over keys ASD and ;LK and thumbs resting on the space bar. It is easy to locate these positions by touch because of the raised attachments on the index F and J keys.

When playing Supreme Commander I have my right hand on the mouse, and my left index finger normally sitting on the B key. As I will commonly be using the Build Menu to issue construction orders. I have learnt to shift my hand the exact distance and strike the correct keys without looking. I strike the keys with the following fingers:
- B left index
- P left index
- U left index
- T middle
- R middle
- E 4th finger (or index when holding left shift with 5th finger)
- Q 4th finger (or middle when holding shift with 5th finger)

What I find usually helps is that most of my keyboard strokes are executed while holding left shift. This tends to anchor my hand and make it possible to strike a lot of keys accurately and without looking.b

[Lieutenant Lich]

Or you can just have a big hand that can touch Shift and most other buttons .

Spoiler: show

For right-handed: Right hand on the mouse, then group your hot keys around your left hand, which should rest over the following keys (Q, W, E, A, S, D, X, C, E, Tab, Caps Lock, LShift, Ctrl, 1, 2, 3). Then it's convenient to 1) build stuff fast, 2) Create unit groups with Ctrl-[number]; 3) order attack (A), Stop (S), Reclaim (E) and Capture (C) with the keys around. That's my setup, idk what to do if you use the mouse with your left hand.

[Blodir]

How big is your hand? (rhetorical)

How do you go from Q(reclaim) to O(overcharge) without looking at your keyboard?
Do you hover your hand over the keyboard like a piano player?

I put my hand at the standard QSDF (or ASDF) position for typing, so going to O would be quite a stretch.
Y is my comfort limit at the moment.

So a little explanation of how you do that (maybe a picture or short video) would be quite helpfull.

PS: after looking at it some more, i can see that the important stuff is close together, so maybe outliers aren't an issue as they are uncommon?

For Overcharge I have to move my hand quite a bit, I'm aware of this issue, but unfortunately also running out of keyboard space. Ctrl+L is surprisingly very easy for me though with little finger + thumb, I guess O is just harder to find with thumb so I usually resort to moving my hand which is a bad habit. There might be large differences between different keyboards as well.

I've played guitar since I was 11, that might help a bit with stretching, but I don't think it makes that much of a difference - could be wrong though, I don't really have a good point of reference.

It might be a good idea to concentrate on apm for a few games, to get a good idea of what exactly is holding you back the most apm wise. Like I said, usually the problem is mental rather than physical.

[Masyaka]

How much apm do you have?
You should rather focus on apm efficiency, multitasking and map awarness.
40 APM is enought to get in top 100 for sure.
Best players usually have around 60-120 apm.
But keep in mind that we don't have good tools to mesure apm so numbers can be very inacurate (select 20 factories, queue 20 units with 4 clicks = 5 clicks but will count as 400 actions, but also all selection and map movement actions not count at all)

Edit: use hotbuild (press f1 in game to setup hotkeys)
If that will be not enought you can even make custom hotkeys by editing settings file

Use templates (there is a tutorial on youtube)
There are factory templates as well
Try to play zoomed out

Choice between micro and macro is kinda obvius, if there is alot of value in your army you should micro it, but you often can just click retreat and macro in that time.

Economy managment is very important cause unit controll is kinda easy in FA (cause units shoot while move, no need for alot of baby sitting)

i saw voodoo's video when he was fighting againist someone, he had some UI mod or something, he can put mexes without choosing them, just clicks on the deposits. Any idea what is this?