Mod Suggestion: Improving Hotkey Usage
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The problem
Most top players in faf use lots of hotkeys, as is the case with all rts games. However even though faf has tons of different possible hotkey binds you can use they end up being unusable for 1 simple reason: The lack of keys on your keyboard to assign hotkeys to. This is especially noticeable in faf because unlike other rts games there currently isn't (fully) a system in place to work around this issue.
Let me take Aoe2 (and sc2 to a lesser extent) as an example. Aoe2 has, just like faf, a lot of different hotkeys to work with. However In Aoe2 you have the ability to overload hotkeys which drastically improves the efficiency of using your keys to bind hotkeys to. You have a worker selected? Press D to make a stable. You have a stable selected? Press D to make a knight. You have a unit selected? Press D to make them go into defensive stance. Meanwhile on faf you assign D to dive your t1 subs and now the D-key is completely unusable for anything else.
Let me try to emphasize just how bad this is.
A UEF land fac has 20 possible units it can make. Just assigning hotkeys to those units already takes up every single letter key that's in a realistic range of your hand. You are somewhat spared by the current hotbuilding key binds that are currently available by being able to merge land/air/navy & build hotkeys together, but at this point you've only covered the basic hotkeys and already lost 20 keys. General unit commands like move, attack, patrol, stop, assist, reclaim, capture and repair need to be added too. Then you have tons of other often used hotkeys too like drop (from trans), OC, pause, repeat, launch tml, etc, etc. At this point i have only touched the more common hotkeys and haven't even begun assigning them for unit abilities, selection or other features.
The solution
As mentioned earlier there is already somewhat of a solution to this issue and that is the current hotkey combination list under hotbuilding. Although it isn't perfect, if it would be possible to add whatever combination of hotkeys to any button(s) you want it would already be a lot better than the current situation.
So what i'm envisioning is a mod with some sort of template that allows people that have no understanding of coding to easily adjust a few values to construct their own hotkey combination. For example You should be able to assign dive, drop, launch tml and enable/disable shields all to a single hotkey. What i think is most important is that there should be some sort of extensive instruction file in the mod for how to properly use it.
If anyone has a different idea or solution that's viable feel free to share it.
All in all the mod should allow of better competitive play since a better hotkey setup allows for more possibilities.
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yes yes ye
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The mod hotbuildex in the vault has this functionality specifically for hotbuild, I've been using it since hotbuild was integrated because they didn't integrate my hotbuild layout back then. If you want to map overcharge to the same key as your 'build T1 tank' button, you're out of luck though.
The mod needs a minor bugfix right now that someone smarter than me needs to do - you need to open and close the F1 menu each game to make the keys bind, I'm used to it and usually have it done before my ACU has even started to materialise but it's not optimal.
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So the mod is now up on the vault Keyser approved, this mod has 8 defaults through really designed to be more examples than anything. It also adds a couple new unitkeygroups to show you what you can do as a player and more.
You can combined the hotkeys to enable some interesting outcomes if you desire.
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In case there's anyone else out there using hotbuildex, @Dragun101's new mod is called "A Hotkey Keys" in the mod vault and is better than hotbuildex - it's not bugged and obviously has lots of other nice hotkey possibilities. Have just transferred my hotkeys over to it, was easy even for someone who's nearly coding illiterate. Thank you for making this mod.
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https://github.com/Dragun123/HotKeyOrders
This is the GitHub version of the mod I intend to be keeping this up to date. I’ll be updating likely the vaukt version one or two more times. Mostly involving updating the guide
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C Ctrl-K referenced this topic on
