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.

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.

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.

@myEmperor said in Why so gay thing exist?:

Would our game really be worse without this unit?

yes

and what if the RARE scenario occurs when twice the buildrange of your acu happens to be inside an enemy army?

King of under 3800

@Pearl12 said in Fire beetle balance suggestion:

They are intended to be used as a snipe unit,

no

If anything the real crime is being unable to upgrade aeon t2's to t3

Seems pretty toxic to me that you label everyone that disagrees with you as a racist and hate speech supporter

cool story

Ringing radars by rightclicking shouldn't be added. Aside from omni's, which you only build 1 per game of, you basically don't ring any radars since the very small e you get from it is not worth the detriment of making pgens in vunerable places and making it easier for your opponent to spot your radars

No thats not what i mean. I mean being able to build any building, not just storages

Would it somehow be possible that if you have engineers from different factions selected you can start s building of one of their factions and the other would assist? It can be very annoying in teamgames with fullshare when you have t1 engies of different factions everywhere

@rezy-noob said in I hate FAF:

just save your gameprefs somewhere,takes like 10 seconds

This should not be needed

and what if the RARE scenario occurs when twice the buildrange of your acu happens to be inside an enemy army?

you can ignore what i said i went full psycho

@optymistyk said in beating a dead horse - Area Commands:

I'm sure implementing Area Commands in FAF would do great for retaining new players such as myself. And more new players = longer and healthier lifespan of the game. New players have no chance of matching the high APM of old veterans who got used to the outdated UI - putting them at a tangible disadvantage simply because they aren't fast enough at clicking rocks

Im not sure why you think that this is an issue.

@thomashiatt said in Mercy simple suggestion: reduce damage vs ACU:

Not acceptable to have a unit that does different damage to ACU than it does to other things. Too messy and unintuitive. Special cases should be kept to a minimum.

Cant imagine an rts doing that

Really happy to see my maps in the pool

Might also solve some weird bugs like your engies only building a few of the storages before moving on. Assist has always been buggy.

I also think it should be changed considering that 99/100 times you arent building storages with a t1 acu anyway. It adds way more issues than it solves