how did so many people not get trolled yet with f10 in other source games? also, Iam pretty sure F10 = quit worked in empires before
I distinctly remember mootant 'fixing' it through a hack, i think they broke the hack this or some of the previous versions.
its odd, for me, neither config.cfg, nor emp_config.cfg, nor autoexec.cfg contain a binding for F10, but key_listboundkeys shows F10 bound to quit. i tried adding unbindall ontop of emp_config.cfg since it was missing (it exists in config.cfg), but to no avail. this doesnt mean its unfixable thouhg, if you unbind f10 in autoexec it seems to fix it since autoexec is the last .cfg getting executed (except for the empires specific ones, but they dont contain F10 either). i only tested it in console, but i dont think starting the game will bind it again. tl;dr: as neoony suggested, put "unbind F10" (ofc without quotes) on a new line anywhere in your autoexec.cfg (for completeness, its in <empiresdir>/cfg/autoexec.cfg)
for some reason, I never had commands that I entered in console saved through restarting the game in empires... unlike other source games. any bind had to go to autoexec to stay and I think even the save command didnt help. (host_writeconfig I believe) think its the same with commands, not binds
i even ctrl+f'd, no quit, no f10 in either file. yet it comes up when i tell the console to print out keybindings ingame unless i unbind it in autoexec :D obviously im too dumb to use search correctly - it indeed is in emp_config.cfg, this also explains why unbindall didnt work (how obvious). however i think changing emp_config is not safe as in it could get overwritten by changing ingame settings. yeah that never worked for me either.
