If you box select a group of units, then press Cntrl-E you get only the engineers. Useful in a close rax to rax brawl when yours goes down; you want the engineers to coordinate on the location you're about to drop a new rax, while the rest remains undistracted. If you press Cntrl-E without a selection, you get the nearest engineer. Useful when thinking of dropping turrets while a group of units moves out from your base. Press Cntrl-E Cntrl-E, you get all engineers selected. I'm not sure about the style of keybindings to use, in order to not conflict with existing ones. Also, class should be visible from commview with an icon next to every unit; along with ammobar, healthbar. The thing on the bottom just takes too much time, because you have to select each unit first to see the stats.
Dont think thats needed honestly. What would be good is squad commands selecting squads and giving them orders. As in ctrl bind 1 to alpha etc
Yeah, what I always wanted was hot keys to automatically select a whole squad. I mean generally you give orders to squads, not player a, b, and c. Being able to select say all the engys in an area isn't something I ever really see using, because I generally would either expect or say players to change class to do whatever general task you wanted done, like repairing the rax.
I think this is already possible? It's a little obscure but I think you can do something like: Enter command view. Open unit menu. Open up the squads, hold shift and click the squad name. (Select all units under that header.) Hit ctrl+number to set them to a control group. When in command view, hit the number you assigned the squad to. I don't know if we need class specific selection though.
@Tama I like the idea of an engineer quick select... Can we have it as a button in screen (think supcom2)? I'm not sure if selecting all engineers is useful though... @Smithy I never knew that was possible... Worthy of putting in an advanced tutorial...
its also quite dynamic, classes can be changed easily. a hotkey to select all engineers (and it really only need engineers tbh) onscreen would be helpful tho.
With e-building, when I drop a building everyone should know where it is, and even without, all players, not just the engineers should know what's happening. When you drop something, give a guard order to everyone in the surrounding area and then give targets back, there is no need to select only engineers. I think it'd just over-complicate things and I don't see myself using it. Something much more important that selecting engineers should be considered... You should be able to know the class of your infantry without having to select them, this is really lacking and you end up dropping building for people who are not engineers. Additionally, you can't tell the classes of people inside of tanks, this is a huge problem.
Mr x has a fair point, it would be handy if infantry and tanks had an icon over their heads indicating what class they are. I also agree with the method of giving everyone a guard order to show a building has been dropped, then immediately giving an attack order on something nearby if it exists. I do tend to just cancel orders if I don't find anything to attack, to basically give an "all clear" to people on the ground. This gives everyone the most useful update on their surroundings I feel.
I feel like you're adding features to average commanders who know the basics but not much more. I dont see the reason to that. Add features that makes comming easyer for noobs or for super experienced commanders. Theres barely any middle of the road commanders left anyway. What would really be helpful is tooltips during the game for commanders like in total war. If an engi passes a ref you get an alert to tell u to place a ref, when research is down it tells you its down ( after 60 sec or so ). When theres no vf or radar it pops up that you need to build a vf or radar. in the top left is the tooltip, she always comes up and tells me obvious things I might forgot and for noobs its super easy to learn the game. Its like a friendly veteran commander speccing you and telling you what to do.
I actually think this tooltip shit is a really good idea. If a comm hasnt dropped a building in the first 2 minutes the tooltip can tell the comm where the build menu is etc loads of other stuff aswell, if you havent dropped a single turret it tells you turrets might be a good idea. All of those shenanigans. No weapons engines or armor researched but u have meds?-> it suggests you get those Otherway around goes aswell u have 3 armors researched but none of the others -> baaaam it tells u to.
Ok, sounds like just the class icon showing will do (also when inside a tank) - engineer quick select is not even that great an idea; it would select the closest engineer to you, but that may not be the engineer closest to the building you dropped.
If class icons is an option I think everybody would take that in a heartbeat. So helpful as compared to selecting and reviewing what you have selected.
What if the lady in the cv informed everyone in the vicinity that a building has been dropped? No symbols just voice notifications. And and what if unit selection was like classic c&c games where each unit has its unique voice so u could identify its type? kek. We could have one voice per faction and each class could have its own unique lines that would make them easily identified. like "Engineer here, Rifleman here" etc simple stuff. Only the communder would hear. or maybe the selected units too? =ooooooo such rts very next gen empires If we had more voice acting i would like when the roflman is ordered to attack, to say "like shooting fish in a barrel" look what you've done, you've covered my entire field with fish Theoritically voice commands is the best way to inform people, except when you're doing trench war and your ears are being raped by cannons. Also, I would be concerned about the possible spam.
There's already a sound that plays when a building is dropped nearby, but like all sounds in Empires it is unreliable. And if it only tells you there's a building nearby what if the commander drops it out of the notification area? It would just be unreliable, no the commander giving a guard order is the only reliable way to do it. There's only so much sounds you can have before it becomes too much, especially since Empires doesn't have sound groups tuning so you can't lower or increase the volume of voice messages, or of the commander, or lower the volume of explosions.
