Having posted this before and gotten no response at all, i am uncertain if anyone agreed with me or disagreed with me. I am thus reposting as a poll so i an at least get a perception of people views.

Would it be possible to add the ability to hotkey in some way groups of combat bots. Anyone familiar with the "Total War" series of strategy games is familiar with this mechanic, where you can set up groups of units attached to keys and then give them orders without having to select each unit one at a time.

Lets say i am mid game (RC 12/RadX 12) and have 6 cruiser combat and 4 Aquamarine wild. What i am asking is to hotkey 2 cruiser and 2 aquamarine in one group and two groups of 1 aquamarine and 2 cruisers, so i can direct them to kill various targets without having to select them all the time.

This might make the game more interesting to people who love RTS, and thus get another player demographic into the game.

I understand the utility but I just worry about the implementation. Would it be triggered from the hotbar, just like an equipped item?

I voted yes, but with changes. We really need more hotkeys if we want to be able to use this kind of system. shift-keying and the sorts would go a long way but as it is now having 10 hotkeys is far too little to make this work cause no1 would use the feature over having tweaks and whatnot on their hotkeys.

Go play an older RTS game like Age of Empires, they had a really good model.


Drag select area and while doing so hit [CTRL]+[KEY] = Bind (select this group) to the [KEY] (Usually a number)

From a selected group a series of single keys can issue specific orders as if the [X] menu had been used for all ships.

(E.G. [SHIFT][F]ollow Me)

So to get half your slaves to follow you, the sequence would be.

[Not needed to repeat]
Select the desired slaves [CTRL]+[SHIFT][O]

[Repeat at leisure]
[SHIFT][O][F]

Ideal would be to tie multiple commands into a single stroke as described in the OP, so that for example two of the commands ([F]ollow me, fig[H]t enemies) could be bound to a single key [<] for example.

Assuming 3 groups assigned to [U][I][O], to get all slaves to use "follow me, fight enemies" the sequence would be.

[U][<] [I][<] [O][<]

Something like that.

Oh and a simple key to de-select the bunch would be nice too. Unless I missed the key, it appears the fastest way is to try to select empty space, but that doesn't always work.