Seems like a weird thing to leave out.
Select All/Select Next/Select Idle X
I basically want to be able to configure hotkeys for being able to select specific types of units. Select of vehicles/infantry etc is okay but I would like a lot more granular control than that.
If I want to select next Panzer Gren etc, or all idle Shermans, it would be useful if there was a hotkey for it. Ideally we should just have the option to add these as we see fit, rather than having a static list of all possible selects in the settings. Here's a mock up of the screen:
![](https://iili.io/HWlJ1Mx.png)
The 'condition' gives you a lot more flexibility for the selector as you can have 'Idle' as you already have but also a whole bunch or other states like 'On screen', 'Off screen', 'In Base', 'Damaged', 'In Friendly Territory', and then also have logic gate AND, OR, NOT etc built into it. So the selectors will read basically like a SQL statement:
SELECT * FROM INFANTRY WHERE (IN_BASE && REINFORCED) || (IN_FRIENDLY_TERRITORY && NOT DAMAGED);
Naturally, casual players wouldn't play with this much but it gives endless flexibility to more advanced players.
Focus Selected Doesn't Work With Sub Selected Units
So focus selected is an interesting hotkey, however, it seems to have a bug, or a defect that was never considered, in that when you have two units selected and then sub select one of them (tab) and then press focus select, it doesn't pan the camera to the sub-selected unit. I would have thought this to be this to be one of the main use cases of this function so kinda surprised it doesn't work.
Select All/Select Next/Select Idle Engineers
I have no idea why this was removed, I used it all the time. The feature I describe above would make this obsolete.
Optional Control Group Colour Association
It would be amazing if in the settings you could set certain control groups to have a colour outline around the unit icon in the tact map and bottom left (or right depending on where you put it that line of units).
I've made a super rough outline of what that would actually look like:
![](https://iili.io/HV3ksnV.png)
The use case for this is mostly the tact map, although you might be able to make it work for the mini map. I feel something like this would make it much easier to locate quickly where that control group is on the map.
Currently in Coh2, if you have two units of the the same type bound to different hot keys, its really easily to mis-select the wrong one in the heat of the moment, as you have to look for the small number. If it was colour distinguished, this would be less of a mental tax on the player. Not everyone would like this though or would want certain control groups to have certain colours, so it would be better if all of this was configurable. Especially if you could configure the colour to your taste.
Hotkey to Cancel Build Queue of Structure or Unit
You can't cancel the Coh2 build queue (in structures) with a hotkey. So you can add units to the queue via a hotkey but you have to click on it to cancel it. This also applies to squad upgrades. It would be so much better if you had a hotkey for this.
Random Factions and Random Doctrines in Automatch.
I want to be able to start automatch searching and not know what faction I will play and what doctrines I will have. It would be also nice if there was random Axis and random Allies. See Halo Wars/C&C KW for a reference.
We should also be able to add random battlegroups to our roster. So basically, we can select whatever battle groups we want but can also add 'wild card' battlegroups, which are random battlegroups picked once the game loads.
On top of that, out of all our battlegroups, we should then be able to veto whichever ones we definitely don't want to play. Look at the screenshot attached, we have two battlegroups selected and a wildcard battlegroup. Then in the settings, I have 2 battlegroups ticked, which reflects the ones already selected and then I veto the one I definitely don't want to play. This means I could randomly get either of the two other battlegroups.
![](https://iili.io/HWlqGz7.png)
More Control Groups
Ideally it would be nice if we could have as many control groups as we like. Especially now that you can have units in more than one control group, having a limitation of 10 feels fairly suffocating. It would be way better if this was doubled to 20 or perhaps be unlimited (having some sort of add control group button in the settings). This way players are not limited and if they want to use a lot of control groups they can.
This is basically what I would do to the control groups screen:
![](https://iili.io/HW1TfAg.png)
Note this allows us to configure what the symbol for our control groups are. For instance, if I want to order my army by roman numerals, Latin alphabet or Greek alphabet, this would be really nice! Obviously, being the ID, this would need to be unique. But its not hard to imagine that I would want to order my infantry 1-4 with standard numbers and then order my vehicles A-D, with those control groups perhaps mapping to different buttons entirely.
Another thing, if you're using the colour associations for control groups, what happens if a unit is in two control groups with different colours? Naturally, I think this should be configurable, with the options being:
- First Set - Whatever the colour of the first control group applied to this unit.
- Last Set - Whatever the colour of the last control group applied to this unit.
- Stacked - The first colour outline and then the next colour outline surrounding that. So units may have triple outlines which act as a code for the player (orange - purple - black means Engineer - Repair Unit - Flamethrower) but obviously it would get illegible if there are too many.
- Horizontal Split - Split the Icon outline horizontally into the different colours.
- Vertical Split - Split the Icon outline vertically into the different colours.
- Diagonal Split - Split the Icon outline diagonally into the different colours.
Improved Panning to Alert Hotkeys
Currently the issues I see with this shortcut are:
- It's not the most responsive when there are multiple alerts, it usually takes several presses to get it to react.
- It doesn't cleanly moved between the latest notifications, each press doesn't move onto the next notification and you can sometimes be sent back to the previous notification, which is not great. Makes it quite unpredictable.
- There are a plethora of alerts that appear in the in the top left in the heat of battle, so knowing which one the function is going to pan to is not dependable in the heat of battle.
Presuming the responsiveness issues get ironed out, I still think we should strive to be able to configure separate hotkeys for each notification type, as I suggest in my original post.
Being able to do something like Crtl+Tab+G (the exact keys being arbitrary ofc) to pan to that 'grenade thrown' alert would be so much more useful and faster than this fairly unsophisticated hotkey we have now. Ideally we should have the option of having a hotkey for all alert types.
I feel another must is that when we do pan to an alert it should is disappear from the list.
Attack Ground on MGs
Basically allowing you to provide area suppression through smoke, but obviously can be dodged. Just adds that extra skill differentiation.
Toggle Squad Spacing
I notice that squads are much more spread out in Coh3 relative to Coh2, more like Coh1.
I know from experience how annoying it was in Coh1 for a single rifleman to go miles away from the rest of the squad and get supressed.
I also know from experience how annoying it was in Coh2 for squads to clump up and get wiped in one shot.
So could we have a toggle for spacing on the squad so we as the player have control over whether we want the squad to bunch up (to avoid and MG arc) or to spread out (when a getting mortared).
I feel this granularity of control would raise the skill ceiling of the game and make it less frustrating. You could even have configurable formations (V, diamond, 3x3) and that would be yet more interesting.
Timed Hold Position/Wait Command
So this feature requires a bit of contextualisation.
Normally when you want to queue up capping points, you have to select the flag of each point. However, often you want to cap the point a certain way, either from behind cover, in a certain spot, on the edge. Queuing that up though is a lot more difficult as the squad will just move on once it reaches the spot you waypointed.
So it would be nice if you could queue up 'Hold position for 3 seconds' (especially if you could configure the duration yourself!). This way you can cap from the edges of points and queue up the appropriate wait so that they actually finish capping before moving. It would also make flanking more interesting, as you could way point the squad to come into the fray 'after waiting 5 seconds'.
I feel this is another feature that would raise the skill ceiling of the game.
Emplacement Scuttling
If you look at other strategy games, I've really got C&C3KW in mind here but it applies to others, defensive structures like MGs and AT play a lot more of a role. For me, I feel this is the case because selling structures and getting some of the resources back features significantly more.
I feel MG bunkers would get a lot more play if you could sell them and get back a fraction of the resources relative to the amount of damage they received. Likewise with arty emplacements, AT emplacements etc.