"Select nearest idle land scout"?

zappazapper

If "Select nearest idle air scout" is useful enough to be a possible key binding, why not land scouts?

Sladow-Noob

Reason 1:
Airscouts are used due to their speed or patrolling over frontlines where the opponent most likely doesn't have AA yet
Reason 2:
Landscouts simply get denied in 99.9% in the scenarios once past min 5
Reason 3:
You have radars at one point at front. Airscouts are being used to see what units your opponent built, landscouts will die way too early before they can properly see the army

Or in other words:
Why should there be a hotkey for it? I fail to see a single benefit of doing the same thing with landscouts?

CocaineDiesel

Alternatively, copy and paste this into your Game.prefs file, under UserKeyActions, and play the game however you like!

['Select nearest idle land scout'] = {
    order = 40,
    action = 'UI_SelectByCategory +nearest +idle LAND INTELLIGENCE',
    category = 'selection'
},

More info on making new hotkeys here.

zappazapper

@sladow-noob fair points. I'll be the first to admit that some of the things that I do are because I don't know any better. It's simply that I know I don't Intel enough, and I'm trying to make more use of hotkeys to help me do stuff that I'm not doing enough. I have a hotkey for air scouts, and it helps me to use them in a purposeful way instead of just spamming them on a unchanging patrol route like I used to. I figured a similar hotkey for land scouts would do the same, but one thing that has been hard for me to learn is that certain units become irrelevant very quickly. I often include land scouts in my unit comp to make use of the T1 arti's range beyond its own vision, and I figured since they were on the field, if I had a hotkey maybe I could use them to scout more than I am currently. But maybe I should consider the idea that my efforts are better spent on air scouts. Thank you.

Sladow-Noob

just use them along your army, you should have radar anyway. You're doing everything right then, especially when combined with the airscouts

Sylph_

@clyf said in "Select nearest idle land scout"?:

Alternatively, copy and paste this into your Game.prefs file, under UserKeyActions, and play the game however you like!

Do you know what is required to 'unlock' the "UserKeyActions" section in game.prefs?

I recently reinstalled FaF (fresh!), and my game.prefs no longer even has a "UserKeyActions" section (it has a "UserKeyMap".) If I try to add the UserKeyActions section manually (using the syntax from previous game.prefs files) it manually, the game crashes!

I don't know how to get UserKeyActions back!
(My old install had it right there in game.prefs, and I got familiar with adding entries to it as I needed them, but that install was infested with mods and keybindings and mess all over the place!)

MostLostNoob

@sylph_ I would think that simply starting a Sandbox game of FAF would work, but you might also need to try adding a keybind for one of the ones that doesn't yet have an assignment.

CheeseBerry

@Sylph_ The game.prefs file is a lua file, with a couple lua tables inside. This means you can add fields and subfields to the file like you could to any lua table. Phrased differently: you should be able to just copy-paste the UserKeyActions field inside and as long as the syntax is correct, it should work.

The relevant part of the game.prefs file, with everything else and all but two of the KeyActions deleted, should look something like this. UserKeyActions should just be another field, in this case next to the "LobbyOpt_AIEndlessGameLoop" and Notify_acus_disabled" fields:

profile = {
    profiles = {
        {
            LobbyOpt_AIEndlessGameLoop = 'off',
            UserKeyActions = {
                auxilliary = {
                    order = 1121,
                    action = 'UI_Lua import("/lua/keymap/hotbuild.lua").buildAction("Auxillary")',
                    category = 'hotbuilding'
                },
                ['Select split group 9'] = {
                    order = 19,
                    action = "UI_Lua import('/mods/UI-Party/modules/unitsplit.lua').SelectGroup(9)",
                    category = 'UI Party'
                }
            },
            Notify_acus_disabled = false,
        }
    }
}

Here also the file itself:
CheeseBerry_Game_just_UserKeyActions.zip

Sylph_

@cheeseberry Thanks for helping. My problem, it turned out, was that after initial syntax (or perhaps field order, if that matters) the game renamed my game.prefs file after the crash and made a new one without me realising!

I'm up and running fine now!
(although I am curious what exactly triggers the game to auto-create that UserKeyActions field; it could be important if new players see these threads and wonder why they, too, don't have it.)