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.

Waiting for the moment ftx can give his acu to me so it can be of some use after min 5

Isn't that kind of a useless statement? Old and/or experienced players are the only ones who are willing to run in an election like this.

At the very least they should be able to build a radar

Considering the amount of times i've seen "you're chasing away all the contributors!" in the last week i feel like i have to point out that developers are not the only contributors and i can't help but notice that most of the support ftx actually gets is from active contributors.

Hello. I just discovered FAF two days ago, I’m greatly enjoying this game, and the community is great. I have a professional SC2 background and I was gifted with enormous dexterity allowing to be a perfect specimen for RTS competitive gameplay domination. I have watched every single Gyle and BRNK video up to date saturating myself with deep lore and gameplay knowledge. I have finished at least 2 coop missions on Hard and played 3 games vs Sorian AI Adaptive and 2 games vs Sorian AI Rush with a perfect score and finishing the games in under 50 minutes. If I were to guess I would say I’m pretty decent at most gameplay elements, in particular I'm really good at micro and usually dominate my opponent in a straightforward fashion. Also I’m really good at ecoing but I’m struggling with this one thing... Could someone please tell me when to upgrade my Mass Extractors to Tech 2? Thanks in advance.

Some ui improvements (not necessarily small suggestions but i'll post them anyway):

• Make live replays tab background like https://puu.sh/ID0mp/be76fb4c07.png instead of https://puu.sh/ID0lX/89e099d628.png to improve visibility. Should do the same for the leaderboards tab.
• Add more data to the leaderboards, like rating and win percentage
• Add some indication of the current game time of people playing a game in the userlist. Right now it shows you the map and the swords to see that they're in a match but there is no way of telling how long the game has been going on for aside for manually searching for the game in the live replays tab (where you don't have an input field to search for something). So preferably somewhere in this popup window https://puu.sh/ID0pW/347c5f15ef.png it shows you the ingame time and/or somewhere in the personal chat window https://puu.sh/ID0qk/b9bbf4348b.png

Atlantis should be able to squash other subs

@myEmperor said in Why so gay thing exist?:

Would our game really be worse without this unit?

yes

How expensive would it actually be to update intel more frequently

Signing up with you

Sounds like my favorite weekly discussion

https://aoe2.net/#aoe2de-leaderboard-rm-1v1

Maybe can take some things from this

Fixing the problem isnt the cause of concern. Negative side effects because of the fix are

Wasn't a response to you btw, but to the openings post

Maybe look at more than just 2 numbers out of context

How expensive would it actually be to update intel more frequently

@ftxcommando said in Adjust the build skirt of naval factories:

I also don’t think this is a minor thing btw, I’ve gotten BS and BC stuck and had to ctrl+k stuff or seen that i upgraded my hq on a factory too close to coast so now stuff takes forever to get out or even gets stuck on BS that came out 30 seconds ago.

This is something you can personally fix by placing navy facs building t2 or t3 further apart. Issue is that its completely unneeded for t1 navy facs and thats what you build most of, so thats gonna be quite a pain.

Ofc having to manually place your navy facs further apart isnt the most optimal thing, but in practice id say its not even that bad compared to t3 facs and gateways, where units get stuck because they collide with engies, unlike navy units.

Ofc pathfinding issues are shit but i dont think this is the right way to fix it.

Shitty 5km map just autoquit and veto in tourneys np

Biggest intel sadboy issue is losing intel on units when they get transferred to an ally