If you are new to mods, then you are in for a treat. They are not just for replays but can help you in-game too, as they give you additional information and hotkeys etc. Focus on "UI-mods", they can be used in rated games and only effects your own UI. "Sim-mods" changes the game itself, are unranked and must be downloaded by all players.

Try these and see which one suits you best:

Never done this so can't be of much help, but you can find the source code here: https://github.com/FAForever/fa/releases

I can imagine things easily break if you start changing files, so be warned. Backup your game prefs.

Removing core concepts like this is probably in the realm of sim-mods to be realistic, that's my experience with the wishes of the community and balance team. But working with what we have instead of removing, I would be happy with opening up for more "auto-clicking" functions in general. Like in this case ringing extractors automatically.

@magge I don't think so either, but I tried another approach of listening in on the OnCommandIssued event. This would not include every single click, but maybe that is a good thing? Curious if you or someone else can see something I don't here, before I go too far down this road.

This is a simple test, but it does correctly logs the current APM over the last minute. Multiple commands given at once counts as one action, but we could still aggregate that data and a lot more, if it could be interesting in the statistics.

APM_1.zip if you want to try, but this is really all it does right now:

INFO: Current APM: 6 .. Total actions: 6 .. Total commands: 20

INFO: apmlog: {
INFO: -   21.650968551636: {
INFO: -   -   AggressiveMove: 1
INFO: -   }
INFO: -   4.588408946991: {
INFO: -   -   BuildMobile: 1
INFO: -   -   None: 1
INFO: -   }
INFO: -   6.1044588088989: {
INFO: -   -   Move: 1
INFO: -   }
INFO: -   6.5816397666931: {
INFO: -   -   Move: 1
INFO: -   }
INFO: -   5.6394691467285: {
INFO: -   -   Move: 1
INFO: -   }
INFO: -   9.7966756820679: {
INFO: -   -   BuildMobile: 13
INFO: -   -   None: 1
INFO: -   }
INFO: }

@bronedooy Updated with wish #2, I also renamed all the previous hotkeys so you should rebind them

bronedooy_2.zip

Available hotkeys:

• Highest tech Engineer/SACU inview
• Highest tech idle Engineer/SACU inview
• Add closest similar unit
• Highest tech Engineer/SACU inview or add closest
• Highest tech idle Engineer/SACU inview or add closest
• Onscreen similar units / double click for all

I looked into #3, using autohotkey for rebinding XButtons but realized it has some limitations. I can make it do shift-(key), but for some reason it adds the shift. Tried many variants but nothing worked. Anyway, if you want to try it, here is the script. XButton1 = Shift-O, XButton2 = Shift-P - change these (O/P) as needed and reload the script if it is running. It only activates when ForgedAlliance.exe is the active window, so you could add it to autostart and jsut have it on in the background so you dont need to remember it before every game.

FAF_mouse_XButtons.zip

There are other programs that does this better, I have ended up using Logitech G Hub for this (I realized) that comes with my mouse - it works, and I think there are other paid and possibly some free software that does this at a lower level which makes it work seamlessly.

I will start looking into some other wishes for now, but we can revisit your other ones later.

Let me know how it goes with your problems and if it is related to using dual screen please. I only have one screen available at the moment so can't test it myself right now. When all is good, we can upload V1 to the vault.

@bronedooy Ah yes, I should have mentioned that UMT must be active. Sounds strange, it works for me with all my mods active, and with only UMT active as well.

I wonder if it is your dual screen setup that is causing the problem. Could you try with just one screen? And test it first with only UMT active, in case it is some other mod causing problems.

@StormLantern Did you try Idle Engineers Light as recommended by others? Let me know if you still prefer something else

Like Ctrl-K said, I do not think it is possible to change the icon overlapping unfortunately, but I will keep an eye open for any workaround. It would be very nice indeed.

@bronedooy Your wish has been (partially) granted! Test it and let me know if it works as you imagined, we will adjust and add the rest before we upload it to the vault.

bronedooy_1.zip

It adds 5 new hotkeys to the Selection category

1 - Select_highest_engineer_inview
2 - Select_highest_engineer_inview_idle
3 - Add_closest_similar
4 - Select_highest_engineer_inview_or_add
5 - Select_highest_engineer_inview_idle_or_add

What you described will work with 1 or 2 plus 3, the only change is that instead of selecting T3 only, it selects the highest tech engineer on screen. This way it will work at the T2 stage as well.

For 4 and 5 I find them more useful, as you can do everything with just one key. Click once and you select, click again as many times you need to add more engineers.

How is it going for you with #2?

If you check AddClosestSimilarUnit function in selection.lua it basically does that but for just 1 unit, with some modification it will solve your #2 wish as well.

@Ctrl-K Thanks, @Nuggets would this suffice for your needs?

@maudlin27 Very useful! I have actually made an addition to the Group Scatter mod, that I havent released, that can cycle units from most damaged or healthiest, but for now its just one at a time. I have thought for some time to make it possible to click perhaps multiple times to add more and more to the selection. Maybe double every time so it doesnt require 50 clicks. Just going binary healthy/damaged would be easier to use ofc, I will look into it and see if I can add multiple options for different use cases

@magge Should be possible! I guess we just listen to the click events. What should it show ideally and how? Would be fun to have that in the score graph actually for all players, see where things heats up. What is this tool you use?

@Nuggets It's a good idea! Many tree groups have been missed and needlessly destroyed by the subsequent move order.

@Ctrl-K might be right here, but do you think it would still be a problem if it is optimized by let's say limiting to an area around the cursor and caching it periodically? Any other optimizations or problems that you can see?

@bronedooy Thanks for the details, as we discussed in the related thread I very much encourage you to try yourself. The code I sent there, experiment with it and I will leave that part for now. If you need any help just let me know.

1. Should be very doable, I will see if I can do the "add one" code first, it's something I have thought about myself really and will be useful in more scenarios I think.
2. This is the part I leave to you for now, I would recommend to look at other mods as well for inspiration.
3. I refer to the expertise of @Ctrl-K here, but will add that it is possible to use third-party software like Auto Hotkey (https://www.autohotkey.com) to bind those mouse buttons to keyboard keys, and then bind those keys to an action. I use it myself. Try getting AHK working and I can send you the scripts for it.
4. I can look into this, ideally we would want a mod that combines all of them and lets the player decide in settings what to show and when.
5. Ah yes, very much agree on this one. I wonder if that is for performance reasons, as for each unit they have to get a queue to all other orders after their initial one for it to work completely. Maybe just a few more would be nice so they dont stop so soon. Or just an assist order at the end to the closest one, that should actually make them help eachother fully but then leave them not idle at the end. The problem is that it counts as an "autoclicker" and thus is blocked for mods. Should be discussed with core team, you can try to reach them or I might do it a bit later. Keep me posted if you find something out.
6. I think this is very possible actually, there are mods that show things around the cursor ("Chat Wheel" comes to mind) and display anything we want. Could try to do a simple demo for this as a start and then we can add more options to it
7. Ah yes, something is definitely not right there. Not sure what to do, does it work any better if you use one screen only or in some other case? I would recommend to open a new thread for it and see if anyone else has a solution. We can dig into it if you dont get any solution.

Agree with you that mods are quite essential, I couldn't go back to unmodded and frankly more mods should be integrated in my opinion (optional ofc but still standard out of the box).

Focus is on 1 and two then to begin with, sounds good. I'll be back with some code to try out. Good luck on your side!

@Ctrl-K Never had that problem but I suppose you are right, thanks!

@bronedooy It is great if you want to try! If you want to learn I will gladly guide you but I will also help you actually finish it. Feel free to send me a DM if you have specific questions

Not russian, I only know a few words (za zdarovye!) Your English is fine but if I miss something let me know

You are right btw, lets continue in the wish-a-mod topic. I will update it soon with a proper reply

https://forum.faforever.com/topic/8368/wish-a-mod-foundation

What are the disturbing issues?

Here is some code (for the curious) I wrote (borrowed a lot of it) a while back. It selects similar units on screen with one click, and with double click it selects the rest on the whole map. Can easily be adjusted to select a specific category, like your T3 engineers, and to select the closest one.

I have to look into the adding to the selection of 1 more per click (as I understand you want it to work), but I will get back to you.

Feel free to fill in if I am missing some details meanwhile.

-- MultiSelect (click multiple time to extend selection. Eg: Nearest / OnScreen / All)
local lastClickMultiSelect = -9999
local totalClicksMultiSelect = 0
local lastMultiClickUniqueString = nil

local function IsDoubleClick(uniqueString, currentTick, lastClickMultiSelect)
	return lastMultiClickUniqueString == uniqueString and currentTick < lastClickMultiSelect + 5
end

local function SetClickData(uniqueString, currentTick)
	lastMultiClickUniqueString = uniqueString
	totalClicksMultiSelect = totalClicksMultiSelect + 1
	lastClickMultiSelect = currentTick
end

local similarUnitsBlueprints = {}
function MultiSelectSimilarUnits()
	local uniqueString = "MultiSelectSimilarUnits"
	local currentTick = GameTick()

	local str = ''
	if IsDoubleClick(uniqueString, currentTick, lastClickMultiSelect) then
		if totalClicksMultiSelect == 1 then

			similarUnitsBlueprints.foreach(function(k,v) str = str .. v.BlueprintId .. "," end)

			ConExecute("Ui_SelectByCategory " .. str .. "SOMETHINGUNPOSSIBLE") -- dodgy hack at the end there to

		end
	else
		local units = GetSelectedUnits()
		if (units ~= nil) then
			similarUnitsBlueprints = from(units).select(function(k, u) return u:GetBlueprint(); end).distinct()

			similarUnitsBlueprints.foreach(function(k,v) str = str .. "+inview " .. v.BlueprintId .. "," end)

			ConExecute("Ui_SelectByCategory " .. str .. "SOMETHINGUNPOSSIBLE") -- dodgy hack at the end there to

			totalClicksMultiSelect = 0
		else
			lastClickMultiSelect = -9999
		end
	end

	SetClickData(uniqueString, currentTick)
end

@bronedooy I am working on this mod, slowly, and it will include a list of useful functions like this, so it might be added there in the future. This mod is foucsed on more overarching changes to the arcitecture of how hotkeys work though, and also has a thousand other struggles I need to solve, so might be a while until you can use it.

I have had similar ideas however and we should be able to solve your problems seperately.

You inspired me to make a new thread for this purpose, feel free to post it there with some more details

https://forum.faforever.com/topic/8368/wish-a-mod-foundation

A spark of hope can change everything.

Research shows that wishes have proven physical and emotional benefits that can give a (man-)child better health outcomes and increase their chances for survival.

-Make-A-Wish America (possibly altered)

................................................................................................

This thread is dedicated to all you creative non programmers out there.

You have struggles in this game, and all you need is that perfect UI mod you so clearly imagine.

But the mod is not in the vault, and you are not a programmer.

Luckily, we are here to help. We make your mod a reality.

In this thread you can pitch for your idea.

Together we discuss your mod and make sure it will work as you have imagined.

I prioritize the best suggestions and try to do as many as I can.

All mods will of course be released to the vault without any copyright.

Focus is on UI-mods, quality of life kind of things, but also open to grand ideas. Let your imagination soar.

PS: I make no legally binding promises, something I learned from here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2OObOM3R_U

In the Key bindings menu, under "Camera" category you will find everything.

Activate free mode, then press space and move your mouse. You can do this at lower camera hights without free mode but then it resets automatically.

Tracking is also there.

@arran Ah! That's right, I forgot the SMDs! For V4 they will have graduated from elemantary school, promise!

Casts, I know.. sorry about that You know what, I will write some YT comments and ask if they want to try it!